Countdown and Health Care

Keith did a full one hour special comment on health care that was very powerful, had me in tears by the end of it. So beware of the video below, it's an hour long (minus commercial time).

You can find them in smaller chunks on the website as well as a transcript to download: Countdown.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Olbermann on Prop 8

This is one of his best, and most emotional. He captured my own feeling of horror that this travesty of discrimination has been made into constitutional law:



Campaign Comment

Keith Olbermann nails McCain on something that's been bugging me for quite some time. If Obama had made all the mistakes, gaffes and stupid faces and comments that McCain HAS done we would not take him seriously any more. How has McCain gotten away with this farce? Because he's the white guy or because he's the ex-prisoner of war?

Countdown

Here is another Special Comment by Keith Olbermann. He brings up one thing that has REALLY bothered me since 9/11, why does Bush get no blame for it? It was on his watch and the reports were there. It's obvious that Clinton kept a close eye on these things but Bush and crew never did, they just ignored it.

What the Media Doesn't Show You

Think we are seeing the real convention? No, we are seeing what the corporate media wants to show us, and this is true even of my favorites, MSNBC with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. But let me remind everyone what a great source YouTube is for things like this. I was thinking last night how much I'd like to hear Dennis Kucinich speak but thought they wouldn't let him because those in charge of the Democrats are scared of him. I was also pissed that Keith and Matthews went on and on while I could see Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer speaking in the background with no sound. Well, here are both speeches.

More On FISA

Here is a video of Keith Olbermann and George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley discussing the new FISA bill land what is means. Turley says it has no redeeming value to the public whatsoever and eviscerates the 4th Amendment. And we have Democrats to thank for it as well as Obama.

Hillary: Unforgivable

I've been angry at all the crap that Hillary and Bill and have pulled during this election, her desire to win at all costs, even if she destroys the party in the process. Her desire to win clearly moving into desperation. But today she went too far, way too far. In answering a question about why everyone wants to push her out of the race she said this:

My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it.

Her meaning couldn't be more clear, she's hoping Obama gets shot so she can step in and be president. Everyone is saying it's just a gaff, she really didn't mean that, but I disagree. Sure, it was a gaff, but something like that doesn't come out at a press conference unless that thought is very much on her mind. I'd be willing to bet it's even been discussed behind closed doors at her campaign. I've wondered why she hasn't dropped out before now, her continuing at this stage is just insane. Now we know, she's hoping for the worst, because it would be the best for her.

I've long remembered a stand up routine Eddie Murphy did back in the 80's, talking about Jesse Jackson. Eddie imitated the first black man to run for president, he ran all over the stage, pretending to dodge bullets. I didn't think it was funny and the feeling I got was that Eddie didn't either, there was a real edge to him that night. When Barack first started running I remembered that Eddie Murphy show with dread and have often thought that I hope Barack is taking his security seriously.

Bobby Kennedy was the hope of change for his time and was brutally killed. I was 14 at the time and I was as shocked and saddened as I had ever been in my young life. How dare Hillary say what she did, how dare she even hope for Obama's assassination even for a second.

I think she not only ended her presidential campaign today but ended her political career as well. No chance now she will be VP, no chance of anything except maybe being able to hold on to her senate seat. But don't count on it.

Update: I was looking for some stories on this and was surprised at how many people saw nothing wrong in her comments, but then something else leaped out at me. She's said this same thing 2 or 3 times before over the past few months. Keith lists them in his Special Comment but that really didn't register with me but now I get it. This was no gaffe, she is trying to say that people should vote for her because there is too good a chance of Obama being assassinated. This is far worse than I first thought it was, this is absolutely deplorable as a campaign tactic. I'm beyond angry now.

Keith Olbermann was almost too angry to speak when he did his special comment on this tonight.

Special Comment

Keith Olbermann has another Special Comment tonight where he really slams Bush. I've never seen Keith so angry and I've seen him pretty angry. But I agree with 100%, Bush just pisses me off so badly it's hard to even talk about him but his comment about sacrificing golf for the troops was just unbelievable, even for him.

What is really cool this time is that MSNBC had the video of it right away with the code for embedding. I used to have to wait a day until someone put it on YouTube then embed what was usually a very bad image. They announced on Countdown to go to tv.msnbc.com with instructions for how to embed it. On one of his earlier comments MSNBC had a video of it but no way to embed it so I still had to wait a day. I shot an email off to Keith telling him they needed to do this very thing, have a way for us bloggers to embed the good quality video and get it out in the blogosphere right away. They must have paid attention.

That Dangerous Philosophy

"It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!"

That's the part of the outburst from Rep. Monique Davis to atheist activist Rob Sherman in the Illinois State Assembly last Wednesday that really leaps out at me. The entire outburst is quite amazing but I have to puzzle over why she thinks his philosophy (atheism is not a philosophy) is so dangerous, apparently personally dangerous as well as dangerous to her kids. I say personally dangerous because such an outburst can only come from a person scared down to the marrow of their bones. As if she knows, deep down, that her philosophy isn't going to win any showdown with atheism.

The entire text of it can be read at the blog of Eric Zorn for the Chicago Tribune. Zorn himself says this:

I know from experience that many of you will side with Davis (update -- apparently I was wrong! ), but I ask you to consider what the outcry would have been if a lawmaker had launched a similar attack on the beliefs of a religious person.

The "update" has a link to his comment section where to his, and my own, surprise most of the comments are against Davis:

The vitriol spewing from this legislator is shocking, frightening, and, well, frankly makes me incensed.

Who the Hell does she think she is?

Let Monique Davis run for a new legislature - one located in Tehran.

I especially like the bit about her relocating to Tehran. I fully expected to have all the Christians run to Davis' defense against the evil atheist but that isn't what happened. I have to say it's quite a pleasant surprise and one of those things that restores my very faded hopes for humanity, at least for a moment.

She even made Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person In The World" today.

Scroll further down Zorn's blog and you will find links to the story on the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post. He even has a link as to whether or not Lincoln was an atheist. I always thought he was but didn't talk about it in order to win elections. Even back then no atheist could get elected to public office. And below that the Council for Secular Humanism chimes in.

An atheist getting yelled at and treated shabbily makes the news and outrages everyone! How ironic when you think of all the times that happens every day across the country and it never makes the news. Even the first President Bush said atheists shouldn't allowed to be citizens.

Rachel Maddow

Anyone who hasn't heard Rachel Maddow on Air America is really missing something. I think she is the best progressive radio personality out there, in or out of Air America (no, Air America does not have a monopoly on progressive talk radio).

She is very intelligent and gives very concise and on target analysis of just about any political situation out there. She's actually a doctor, but not that kind of doctor.

She shows up on Countdown with Keith Olbermann often (almost nightly these days) and is the most energetic and coherent of all his guests and all of them are the best in the business. And the reason for this post is to announce that she will host Countdown tomorrow, Friday the 4th. It will be her first time but I'm sure she will be the best guest host they've ever had.

Here's the biography from her web site:

Rachel has a doctorate in political science (she was a Rhodes Scholar) and a background in HIV/AIDS activism, prison reform, and other lefty rabblerousing.

She shakes a mean cocktail, drives a bright red pickup, hates Coldplay, loves arguing with conservatives, spends a lot of money on AMTRAK tickets, and dresses like a first-grader.

Rachel is a political analyst for MSNBC, and makes irregular appearances elsewhere on the TV machine -- including "The Today Show", "Good Morning America", CNN, LOGO, and other TV outlets. She's been with Air America since its inception in Spring 2004 -- before AAR she worked for WRNX in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and WRSI in Northampton, Massachusetts. There was also a stint with a jungle-themed company called Expresso Bongo [sic], but she doesn't want to talk about it.

Rachel is 34 years old and lives in New York City and rural Western Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula.

Mukasey

Glenn Greenwald on salon.com wrote an article entitled Michael Mukasey's tearful lies. It's all about the Attorney General giving a speech last week in San Francisco where he says the government's inability to wiretap a call from a safehouse in Afghanistan before 9/11, due to inadequate FISA laws, prevented the government from stopping 9/11.

This is an amazingly outrageous statement and it's absolutely incredible the news media is not covering this, just Glenn. Rachel Maddow, of Air America Radio, had Glenn on her show yesterday, which is how I learned about it. Rachel then went on Countdown to talk about it. You can read the actual transcript here. This is a transcript of the entire Tuesday show so you will have to scroll down a bit to find it, just look for MADDOW. It's well worth the read, I'll just post an excerpt from it here:

MADDOW: The implication of Mukasey‘s story here is that these pesky, restrictive FISA laws kept us from tapping that call from Afghanistan and blocked us stopping 9/11. That‘s complete bull pucky. The laws then, the laws now, the laws since the FISA court has been in existence; the laws have said that you can tap without a warrant that kind of communication from outside the United States into the U.S., particularly if you knew it was an al Qaeda safe house and it had a link in terrorism.

What Mukasey said is either a terrible lie about the law or it‘s terrible admission about the Bush administration leaving us unprotected on 9/11.

Let me translate, she wanted to say bullshit but was on TV. She is also saying that no warrant was ever needed to listen in to that call from Afghanistan since it originated from outside the country. On top of that if they did need a warrant FISA allows them to do the tap immediately and acquire a warrant within 72 hours. So there was no legal reason the Bush administration couldn't have listened into that call and prevented 9/11, they simply failed to do so for unknown reasons (total incompetence would be my guess).

OLBERMANN: And given that Mukasey was working as a judge, if I remember the timing—was working blocks from ground zero. He also said that without telecom immunity, we face the prospect of disclosure in open court the means and methods by which we collect foreign intelligence against foreign targets. Is there even a shred of accuracy in that?

MADDOW: No, that is more bull pucky. He is a federal judge. He knows. Federal courts deal with classified information all the time. They have a whole bunch of different ways of dealing with it. They have closed court rooms. They have ex-parte communications. They hear things in judge‘s chambers.

So Mukasey also said that these law suits against the telecoms would reveal the workings of our Intelligence so Al Quida would then know how we do things. Rachel says bullshit again. Anything involving state secrets is not talked about in open court, it is done in the judge's chambers and sometimes not even the defense counsel is allowed to be present. So clearly, a blatant lie by our nation's highest law enforcement officer.

OLBERMANN: Let‘s put two things together. We heard this book that‘s coming out about the various elements in the 9/11 investigation and the quotes attributed to John Ashcroft, saying don‘t bother me with this; I don‘t want to hear about this al Qaeda again, sometime in June, I guess June of 2001. If we put all these little strands together, the possibility that maybe Mukasey has the details wrong, or—but he‘s got a shred of something. He couldn‘t have made that up out of whole cloth. Something is in there and there are all sorts of other strands. We know about the PDB that nobody paid any attention to. We know about the ambivalence towards listening to anybody left over from the Clinton administration.

So the gist of the story is that Mukasey really let something slip, he let out the information that the Bush administration COULD have stopped 9/11 if they hadn't been asleep at the switch. When are we going to throw all involved into jail?

Walmart - The Worst

On Keith Olbermann's Worst Person's last night he gave the gold to Walmart for a truly unbelievable story. It seems one of their employees, Deborah Shank, got into a bad car accident and received brain damage so bad she is in a nursing home for the rest of her life and has no memory past the most recent minutes. She had insurance at Walmart and the bills were paid. The family sued the driver and was rewarded $470,000. Walmart then turned around and sued Deborah Shank to get the money to cover her medical expenses, they won and got the money back so now Deborah Shank's husband has to struggle to pay her outrageous medical bills.

Now let's be clear here, although this sounds about as awful as it can be Walmart has done nothing illegal or unusual - whether or not it is right goes to the heart of the greedy and corrupt culture that now exists in America, profits over people is the new golden rule. It is standard practice that money rewarded in a law suit for medical bills goes to the insurance company that paid those bills while the suit was ongoing. If you have medical insurance this will be in your contract somewhere.

And it gets worse, Deborah's son was killed in Iraq last week.

This is all over the news yet Walmart, as usual, has a tin ear for what is going on. People who hear this story say they will never shop in a Walmart again. This doesn't affect me as I already don't shop at Walmart and haven't for years and don't intend to ever do so. It is amazing that Walmart cannot see that to give the woman back her money would be the cheapest positive publicity they ever had. They don't want to set a precedent, you see. If they give the money back in one case suddenly anyone that this has ever happened to at Walmart will demand their money back and will have a case. It might actually cost them a couple of million dollars and your low prices will go right out the window and we can't have that now can we? And just imagine how many poor children will be out of work in China if Walmart has to cut back on their orders.

Keith put them in Worst Person's again tonight and says he will continue to do so. He must like tilting at windmills.

In 2007, the retail giant reported net sales in the third quarter of $90 billion.

Keith Goes After Hillary in a Special Comment

For the first time Keith turns his blistering commentary on a democrat. There is a difference to this one, though. When hitting Bush or Cheney or any other Bushite there has only been anger and contempt, all well deserved, well-aimed and well said. But this time he goes after Hillary Clinton and there is obvious pain in his face and voice that he needs to do this, and he pleads with Hillary to change course. There is still anger and his commentary is still very much to the point and very, very biting and he's saying all the things I've been thinking for weeks. I voted for Hillary here in California but if the vote happened today I would go for Obama.

At the end of the second to last debate it looked like Hillary was going to take the high road even if it meant she lost and I breathed a sigh of relief, but only days later she turned the negative rhetoric into high gear and it's been getting worse ever since. It's already at the point where if she gets the nomination I will still vote for her but very, VERY reluctantly. And I won't be voting for her but against McCain, who I think will be as bad as Bush since Bush has already set the course of MacCain's presidency. At one time I would have been very happy to vote for her but not any more, her scorched earth policy, to win at any cost is just too distasteful and getting worse every day.

Some have even said she is trying to make sure Obama will lose to McCain if he gets the nomination so she will be able to run again in 2012. Unfortunately, that she could be so cynical and would be willing to screw the country over just to get her win, is not all that hard to believe.

OBAMA'S PATRIOTISM

On Monday on Countdown Keith brought up this story:

In our fourth story tonight: Measuring a man’s patriotism by his allegiance to symbols. The “Associated Press” reporting yesterday, the conservatives question Senator Barack Obama’s patriotism because he does not wear a flag pin and because he did not put his hand on his heart during the national anthem last September. CNN.com aiding and abetting with a shocking online poll: Does Barack Obama show the proper patriotism for someone who wants to be the president of the United States?

Obama has already said his grandfather, a World War II vet taught to put his hand up for the pledge but stand for the anthem a common practice as you can see in any ballgame. As for a flag pins, Obama stopped during in the runup to the Iraq invasion when it seemed to become, quote for him, “A substitute for true patriotism”.

Yesterday, he challenged the Republican monopoly on supposed patriotism: “A party that presided over a war in which our troops did not get the body armor needed or was sending troops over who are untrained because of poor planning or not fulfilling the veterans’ benefits that these troops need when they come home or undermining our Constitution with warrantless wiretaps that are unnecessary? That is a debate I’m very happy to have.”

Keith then brings on Rachel Maddow, my favorite left wing radio person, to comment on this and zeros in on the important part:

He’s doing something here that national level Democrats have either been too insecure or browbeaten to do in the last few years. He’s not in hiding. He’s not wishing this away. He’s literally confident and calm in picking up this teargas canister and flinging it back from where it came. He’s saying, you want to talk patriotism, let’s talk patriotism. You want to talk American ideals, all right secret prison guys. Let’s do it.

If this had happened in 2004, this would have seen as John Kerry taking those swiftboat veteran attacks and using them to say, all right, if you won’t denounce this George W. Bush, let’s talk about your Vietnam era service. That’s what a confident candidate does with these kinds of attacks.

And this is exactly the kind of thing I've wanted to see for years. The rightwingers twist the debate and accuse the dems of doing the very thing the Republicans are doing, and the Democrats never set the record straight. If Obama can turn the tables on them I will be very happy, to say the least.

We DO Torture!

Vjack, over at Atheist Revolution has a good post on the history of waterboarding and that only America doesn't seem to know it IS torture and that we are engaged in it. And he has some unkind things to say about Christians on the matter:

Fortunately for the politicians, Christianity, often blended with a sense of white racial superiority, made it easier for the American people to swallow what was being done in their name. After all, the victims of waterboarding were not Christian and thus merely immoral beasts. It did not surprise me to learn that one of the early defenders of waterboarding was a Christian minister.

Keith Olbermann has even worse things to say in one of his Special Comments:

It is a fact startling in its cynical simplicity and it requires cynical and simple words to be properly expressed: The presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.

All the petulancy, all the childish threats, all the blank-stare stupidity; all the invocations of World War III, all the sophistic questions about which terrorist attacks we wanted him not to stop, all the phony secrets; all the claims of executive privilege, all the stumbling tap-dancing of his nominees, all the verbal flatulence of his apologists...

The link takes you to an Alternet site that has not only a video of it but a transcript. Powerful stuff, Keith keeps getting better - and angrier - as time goes on.

I understand his anger, I've been incredulous for months that America has sat back and let Bush and his crew turn us into the kind of country who tortures our enemies. I remember one Vietnam POW saying that one of the things that kept them going through all the torture they had to endure was knowing America would never treat their prisoners like that.

Guess we are now the Vietnamese now.

Olbermann Slams Bush

And here is Keith's comments on Bush's comments at the press conference. The one that made the democrats jump up and yell "How Far, Sir!"

Keith Olbermann lays waste to President Bush

Like he hasn't done that before, but Keith's commentaries are well worth listening to. It's like he's the only special commentator left in America who isn't on the right wing payroll or an idiot, the only one really willing to tell the truth about Bush.

Tidbits

I've been way too busy with work to post here and now there are so many interesting things to write about I thought I would just do some short snippets.
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Dick Cheney is president today. Kind of gives you chills to read that doesn't it? It's like Darth Vader being president, even though Darth is a pussycat compared to Cheney. He's acting president while Bush is sedated for a colonoscopy (I will refrain from the obvious jokes here). At first I thought it was horrible to think of Cheney in charge but after thinking about it I realized it's not really any different than its been for the last 6 years, which also includes Bush's condition.
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Keith Olbermann has a new commentary where he tells Bush to go fight his own war, it's another really good one. Aren't they all? I won't post it this time but will just post a link to the video on YouTube. And a link to Keith's website where you can get transcripts.
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Here is a great Alternet article entitled Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren't Listening. They are crazier and more disgusting than we think they are.
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The last Harry Potter book is now out amidst great excitement and fanfare. Doesn't mean much to me since I haven't read the books. I read the first one and thought it quite good and I could understand why kids love it so much. But it was very obviously written for kids so I found it too boring to continue to read the series. Darcy loves it though and has all the books and put in a pre-order for it at Barnes & Noble months ago, so we should be getting it this week sometime.
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Michael Vick: What an uproar the news of him being involved in dog fighting caused. Once again I'm reminded why I really don't want to know any personal info on famous people, I just want to see them work. Usually if I do find out something it's not good and that cuts down on my enjoyment of their work. I'll never be able to watch Vick in a game again without thinking about dog fighting, which is completely disgusting and cannot be defended in any way. It's amazing how much this has pissed people off, yet everyone doesn't get nearly as upset when they hear that 10 of our troops were killed today and 100 Iraqis. What we need to do is create some dog-soldiers, send them to Iraq and get them blown up. People will be so outraged the war would end soon.
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Robert Byrd: He was one of those guys who was outraged by Michael Vick and gave an impassioned speech on the floor of the Senate. I haven't seen him on TV in quite a while and all I can say is the guy is WAY past time to retire. The term doddering old fool comes to mind. I've never liked Byrd, he is one of those old-time southern democrats - from 2 or 3 generations ago - who are really just Republicans in disguise. Most of the rest have become Republicans by now. Byrd is a racist southern boy but I have to give him props, back in 2002 (2003?) when Bush was looking for the authority to attack Iraq, Byrd was one of only about 3 or 4 Senators who voted against it. He mentioned the Gulf of Tonkins back in the 60's that got us into Vietnam big time. He voted for it then and deeply regrets it today and he didn't want to make that same mistake again. Too bad no one listened to him, any more than Byrd listened to the few voices of dissent back in the 60's.

Olbermann Special Comment

Keith gave his best, and angriest, commentary so far yesterday:

Cowardly Democrats

I have been a lifelong liberal democrat and it's hard to describe the tremendous disappointment I feel about the dems in congress. There has been plenty of disappointment for the last few years but this one is the worst, they have given in to Bush completely when they should be fighting him every step of the way. Nancy Pelosi praises the new "compromise" while saying at the same time that she will not vote for it. While I hate the Republicans and everything they have done to destroy this country at least they aren't timid. Did they hesitate to impeach Clinton when they had far less reason and far less support from the public than an impeachment of Bush would have? No, and they curbed Clinton's ability to do anything pretty effectively during that time. But the dems not only don't impeach a man who is clearly the most law breaking president in American history but they have rolled over and played dead over the Iraq war. They play politics while American soldiers continue to die because of Bush's lies. I love this picture of Reid raising his hands in surrender because that's exactly what he's done. He's a joke, how the hell did he get to be leader in the Senate?

At least Keith Olbermann didn't disappoint. He gave one of his Special Comments that really socked it to the dems, and to Bush who is the villian of the piece.

"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"

See the video or read the transcript here.