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On Countdown Wednesday night, Keith Olbermann had some comments on Donald Rumsfeld’s Tuesday speech to the American Legion convention. By Thursday, it was all over the blogs. (Full transcript here.)

That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count — not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to flu vaccine shortages, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Olbermann ended with an extended quote from Edward R. Murrow:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

Oh… my… God.

Via Crooks and Liars, a new way to cope with the losses imposed by war: Flat Daddies:

Maine National Guard members in Iraq and Afghanistan are never far from the thoughts of their loved ones.

But now, thanks to a popular family-support program, they’re even closer.

Welcome to the “Flat Daddy” and “Flat Mommy” phenomenon, in which life-size cutouts of deployed service members are given by the Maine National Guard to spouses, children, and relatives back home.

The Flat Daddies ride in cars, sit at the dinner table, visit the dentist, and even are brought to confession, according to their significant others on the home front.

I’m sure this program is well-intentioned. Maybe it even helps families cope. But, oh, my God… what are we doing to these people?

Jesus’ General thinks this is just the thing for George W. Bush:

I’m wondering if Our Leader should consider doing something similar. A lot of people think he doesn’t care about the men and women who are defending us against Islamic enslavement. They wonder why he has time for vacations (a whole year’s worth of vacation time in the first five years of his presidency) but is unable to free himself for a few hours to attend a soldier’s funeral a stones’s throw across the Potomac at Arlington.

It doesn’t have to be that way. With a dozen or so Flat Deciders™, he could attend nearly every soldier’s funeral. I doubt most people would even notice that he’s only a cardboard cut-out. Indeed, the fact that the Flat Decider™ is merely a cold, heartless, two-dimensional rendition of a real human being is what makes it so realistic.

Speaking to the American Legion Convention yesterday in Salt Lake City, George W. Bush said this:

On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation — the right of all people to speak, and worship, and live in liberty. And on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism — the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest.

I’m no fan of Mr. Bush, but this is one of the most forthright and incisive descriptions of this country’s current political environment that I’ve heard from anyone. For the first time, Bush acknowledges — what? Are you sure about that?

I’m sorry. My mistake. He — he was talking about the U.S. vs. the terrorists. The terrorists are the “self-appointed few,” see, and Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and that lot are the “freedom and moderation” guys. Seriously. Now, I can see the terrorist part — the guys who want to impose fundamentalist religious governments, with themselves saying what God’s will really is — that part totally works. But the other part? It seems to help if you squint a little and look at it really quickly out the corner of your eye.