Come on, Karl (R) & ABC, Inc. (R). Show a smidgen of honor. For a change.

If you (ABC Execs) run a couple days of promotions, then, on Friday, announce that you're $hi!canning Karl and disclosing the liar (Note: he's no longer a "source&quot ... you will absolutely KILL in the ratings!

And restore the dignity of your news division.

Right now Karl is both a hack and a patsy. By naming his source he stops being a patsy. Of course the possibility exists that was a willing participant in the deception, in which case he's not a patsy but a hack and a shill which would explain why he refuses to name his source, he was not ratfucked, he was ratfucking, which would make him a permanent hack and shill.

Well said.

Thanks kpete.

It went bad when it almost exclusively became the province of the under-ethical.

Bill Maher broached the subject last week with Michael Moore - wondering aloud whether all this obstruction was tantamount to treason.

Well, I think he makes a GREAT point, and WE ought to be repeating that meme and starting to bring it to life.

Consider:

At this moment, we still are a nation AT WAR. We presently have thousands of Americans IN HARM'S WAY, IN ACTIVE COMBAT, IN LIVE HOT ZONES. FACING ARMED AND RELENTLESS AND WELL-ARMED ENEMIES. RIGHT NOW. At this very instant. Afghanistan mainly. But ANYWHERE in the frickin' Middle East, their lives are literally on the line.

Now - when a President presides during wartime, that makes him a wartime president, does it not?

And what else is a President known as? How 'bout Commander-in-Chief of ALL United States Armed Forces? Yep, WHOEVER the POTUS is at any given moment, that's his OTHER title. That's what else our nation's Chief Executive is.

Now - what would you call obstructing the Commander-in-Chief of all United States Armed Forces DURING wartime? I think it just might be TREASON. Probably HIGH Treason, at that. Because like it or not, the United States of America is still at war.

So that means Barack H. Obama is not only the current President, he's also Commander-in-Chief of all U.S. Armed Forces. And at THIS time, he's a WARTIME President and a WARTIME Commander-in-Chief. Anybody willfully getting in his way and impeding and obstructing his job is, in effect, committing TREASON. After all, they're obstructing the Commander-in-Chief of all U.S. Armed Forces DURING A TIME OF WAR.

What do you think the republi-CONS would be doing now - if it was their guy in the White House, facing this much on-going opposition?

This whole mess needs to be reframed and renamed. And if they were blathering about the "I-word" then I think it's high time we started bringing up the "T-word."

It's time to fight these bastards with EVERYTHING WE'VE GOT. TREASON. That is what the GOP is now GUILTY of. They've even got the "G-for-guilty" in GOP already in place.

I think I'm gonna post this as a thread of its own. I'd like your take on this. I think it's messaging we should start circulating. Maybe it'll catch on.

I don't want to legitimize an executive on steroids anytime we have a war going on. Hell, they'll start wars just to be granted War President status. We already had that happen under W.

I'm all for fighting the obstructionism, but I think this method of doing so is a mistake. When a Republican president goes and gets us into our next war(s), I don't want them to be immune to any scrutiny whatsoever just because they're a War President. Absolutely not.

conspiracy. Deliberately misleading the public in an attempt to impeach the President during war time.

mitch mcconnell's "promise" to be reasonable - so he left the filibuster rules intact. SURELY the opposition would be reasonable! And guess what happened? mcconnell went ahead and broke his "promise," as most of us expected he might. Harry Reid had a chance! His logic was along the lines of not wanting to set a precedent that might come back to bite the Dems in the ass if ever they lost the Senate.

Well, guess what? If the worst happens and the republi-CONS do win back the Senate, do you think for one instant they'll behave as cautiously as Harry Reid did? HELL NO!!! I would expect them to change every rule they can to make sure the minority does NOT have a voice at all. I'm not a betting woman, but I would bet on that one. They're just fucking ruthless. I wish our side were, too.

Maybe it's time to move now, to act now - WHILE we have the strengths that we do. Worrying about what might happen if, if, if... seems counterproductive and unrealistic, considering how ruthless the opposition is that we're facing.

Reid is neither a wuss nor a fool. He is balancing the Dems' untenable position of getting into office with corporate donations, not offending those donors, but also appearing to be on the side of the people enough to make them the lessor of two evils. The donors will permit the Dems to be slightly more in favor of the people, so long as they are mostly ineffective in this regard. They like having a public face of legitimacy on the system. If the Dems actually get things done for the people, the corporate donations will disappear.

Senate reform would have made too many donors unhappy.

The Republicans can be ruthless because they are up-front advocating for the donors' needs. Their untenable situation is that they have to scare and/or misinform people to vote against their own interests, using wedge issues, shrinking the number of eligible voters, and concocting enemies we should be very afraid of.

Personally I favor the approach of Occupy. It needs to re-emerge with a new skin. The name Occupy is itself a provocation to the authorities, I think that's probably a mistake to call it that. And I would like the movement to exist as an uprising inside the Democratic Party, to reclaim our party from the corporate donors and their policies. But the entire national dialogue changed when Occupy surfaced, then quickly returned to the usual dreck when Occupy was beaten into submission. We have to get back to that to get any real change, and obviously we have to get corporate money out of our electoral process, and out of the reach of our elected officials.

Strengthening the executive branch under the guise of war-time presidential powers is terrifying to me, and is the exact opposite of giving more power to the people.

I completely understand the frustration and what you're reacting to. Things do have to change, and it has to happen like yesterday. 400 ppm CO2, increasing super storms, insane inequality, erosion of personal freedoms and privacy, militarism around the globe funded by U.S. taxpayers to secure access to natural resources for multinational corporations, new trade agreements that advance labor's race to the bottom, it's terrible and has to change.

And what we get is corporate Dems being obstructed from throwing their bones to the people by fake scandals whipped up by a rabid right-wing that couldn't care less how their obstructionism effects the 99%. It truly sucks. It's all part of the good cop bad cop game of the two major parties, to the detriment of our physical environment and of 99% of the human population.

Sedition is defined by Wiki as: "In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. "

I believe treason is stronger and may be harder to prove in this case. But I agree that this should be brought forward for further discussion.

was leaked.

How many unknowns, in dicey secret situations, die because of this kind of stuff?

This isnt like religion where he can go before the head of ABC and get absolved of his hackyness. He was hired because he is a hack. He was complicit in this attempt at smearing the president.

This whole thing smacks of the other Karl. You know the one, Karl Machiavelli Rove. The ends justify the means.

I only hope ABC realizes how he's damaged their brand. Such as it is.

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working for the tower dwellers

Fine journalists and one-time anchors at ABC News all.

, but then, I guess sources CAN play this plausibly deniable game too.

oh wow,

Little jonathan kkkarl probably wants more - doesn't dare wanna turn off that spigot!

They know that politicians have an agenda and they would have verified the information precisely to avoid what happened to Karl. Karl was had and he ended up with egg on his face.

Is ABC now the same as Fox-lies? another hack propaganda arm of the republican party?

themselves with it.

This is how you will be remembered, Jonathan Karl.