Olbermann's final campaign Special Comment

Geeze, I'm going to miss Keith Olbermann's Special Comments on the election - above is video of his last one. Of course, not to worry, though, because there's plenty of other things to get his dander up, including 77 more days of Bush rule before he rides off into the sunset and back to Texas to his faux ranch.

Anyway, earlier today, Olbermann pondered an interesting question - if Obama had made the same gaffes that McCain has made during the last three months, what would have happened?

Take it away, Keith:

We all know exactly what would be happening tonight if Senator Obama had made all those mistakes, contradictions, gaffes, Freudian slips, and hypocritical pronouncements. He would have long since ceased to be taken seriously by any measurable part of the voting public, as a viable, responsible, self-aware, mentally vigorous, non-dangerous, non-risk. We'd all be going home to our beds well before midnight tomorrow night.

But while all that is hypothetical, this is not: This cascade of incompetence and irresponsibility I have enumerated tonight -- all the sound bites, all the foot-in-mouth moments, all the no-brainers-gone-wrong - all these, John McCain has said. No hyperbole and no hypotheses are required.

This is who John McCain has showed us he is.

I can't say it much better than that. Obama would have been toast had he even come close to McCain's ineptness on the campaign trail, which illustrates the white privilege that's been so evident in this election.

How so?

Just imagine if Barack Obama (or even Joe Biden) had a family in the same situation as Sarah Palin - an unwed teenaged, pregnant daughter? If you're really being honest with yourself, it's not hard to envision that the media would have roasted the Obamas and raked them over the coals.

Olbermann's Special Comment on Palin

Last night, Keith Olbermann unleashed a savage and well-deserved attack on Sarah Palin, which was one of his finest Special Comments I've heard in a long time. Olbermann, like many, is outraged at Palin's hypocritical remarks regarding Barack Obama's "association" with Bill Ayers.

Here's a particularly poignant passage:

"The Governor of Alaska wants to start calling people terrorists -- and insisting of Senator Obama that quote 'this is not a man who sees America like you and I see America' - and whose rhetoric like that and the 'pallin' around with terrorists' line were rightly described by the Associated Press yesterday as a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing kind of way of slipping racism into the equation because it's a nifty trick to remind the white folk that (PSST!) 'Obama is black.'

But overriding this sleaziness -- and doggone it, the Governor of Alaska has got to be the sleaziest politician working the stage at the moment -- there is the sheer blessed stupidity of letting herself become the bomb-thrower when her own life is full of domestic terrorists.

Governor -- Bill Ayres? Your hubby was in this secessionist hate group for which you recorded a video.

Governor -- Jeremiah Wright? That pastor you credit with helping you become governor is either a con man or a psycho who believes he can tell which woman in the village is the witch and which is the governor."

I'm delighted that at least someone in the media is pointing out what so many are either ignoring or neglecting to follow up on - that Palin has some highly questionable people in her private life that should raise some legitimate concerns among voters, at best, starting with the man she shares a bed with (and I'm not referring to her husband's business partner, with whom she reportedly shared more than profits with).

I've said it before, and I will undoubtedly a great deal more before the election - McCain's selection of Palin disqualifies both, in my view. Palin is unfit to hold the office of the vice presidency, much less the presidency, and if this is the sort of people McCain wants to select to fill posts in his would-be administration, then we are all in it if he becomes president.

Olbermann doesn't always get it right

Lots to get to this morning, but before I do, it's worth taking a minute to mention one of Keith Olbermann's Special Comments last week. It's no secret that I feel Olbermann is one of the best liberal commentators on television, but that doesn't mean I always agree with him. For instance, last week, in light of Hillary Clinton's RFK gaffe, Olbermann took some pretty harsh liberties with Clinton, and by saying that, I'm being kind. My personal lowlight from his 10-minute tirade (transcript Here):

And certainly to invoke [RFK's assassination], three days after the awful diagnosis, and heart-breaking prognosis, for Senator Ted Kennedy, is just as insensitive, and just as heartless. And both actions, open a door wide into the soul of somebody who seeks the highest office in this country, and through that door shows something not merely troubling, but frightening. And politically inexplicable.

Sweet Jesus. I've vehemently and sometimes obnoxiously defended Olbermann countless times over the last 3-4 years against the charge that he's becoming the left's Bill O'Reilly. While I'm certainly not on that train yet, a few more Special Comments like these, and I may just get in line for a ticket. Olbermann has done so much good, and has been such a powerful, refreshing voice in the wilderness during Bush's second term, he does himself and his listeners a tremendous disservice by slamming Clinton over her RFK gaffe. To say that her comment "opened the door wide into her soul..." is simply absurd.

Evidently, I'm not alone. In this week's Time, James Poniewozik gives KO a gangsta slap for his Hillary Special Comment. A lengthy excerpt (and trust me, it's worth the read):

...Olbermann is edging ever-closer to self-parody, or, worse, predictability. (As soon as the Clinton gaffe broke, blog commenters were wondering how ballistic he would go, and he obliged, and how.) Even if we concede his argument—that Clinton was at best callously and at worst intentionally suggesting she should stay in the race because Obama might be killed—every time he turns up the volume to 11 like this lately, he sounds like just another of the cable gasbags he used to be a corrective to.

But mostly his outburst reminds me of how the long Democratic primary has divided the left-of-center media (or at least, the media outlets with a left-of-center audience) into camps, like a bad divorce. Personalities and institutions that were once universally beloved by people who were sick of the Bush administration have either taken sides, or have been perceived to, splintering what used to be a unified and largely uncritical amen chorus.

Most of the perceived side-takers have been on the Obama side, as we've seen—it's not just Olbermann, Daily Kos and the Huffington Post, but even some viewers of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (as sanctified as any center of anti-Bush comedy can be) have gotten alienated by the shows' attacks on Hillary Clinton. (I haven't sat down with a stopwatch to see if they mock her more than Obama, but they certainly mock her better.) There are fewer pro-Clinton equivalents, but Saturday Night Live, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and my old employer Salon.com have all taken criticism for carrying water for Hillary, from the same sorts of people who loved them when they were knocking Bush and Cheney.

[...]

It's probably asking too much, but maybe the experience of being annoyed by someone you used to constantly agree with could teach political audiences something about how they have appeared all along to their adversaries. Think about it: if you've found yourself suddenly irritated by any of the people or outlets I mentioned above this election, is it really they who've changed? Or are they simply less charming when they're not confirming your comfortable beliefs?

Sometimes, maybe, the only way to really understand how your idols sound from the other side is to actually find yourself on the other side of them.

I'm not ashamed to say that Poniewozik's piece this week is as poignant and spot on as any of Olbermann's Special Comments I'd heard in 2008.

Olbermann really does need to ratchet down the rhetoric and save those "volume 11" rants, as Poniewozik calls them, for the true outrages of the Bush administration.

Countdown is still a can't-miss show, and most nights (or the next morning) I watch it, but the last thing the left needs is a blowhard like Bill O'Reilly, making every little indiscretion or gaffe sound like it's the worst political miscalculation ever. What's more, there are plenty of outrages out there being committed by this administration he should be focusing his attention on.

Olbermann on war crimes by W's cabal

This one's a little old, but it still merits a mention. Just under a few weeks ago, Keith Olbermann unleashed a tirade against the Bush administration for its conduct in Iraq. After thinking about it, Olbermann clarified his remarks backed up his proverbial bus, and ran over Bush and his war-making cabal again, calling some of them (including Bush, and presumably, Dick Cheney) "cold blooded killers." I won't apologize for agreeing with him.

Bush and many in his cabinet (but not all, as Olbermann rightfully points out) almost certainly deserve to be tried for war crimes. It's a pretty sticky issue that many would take offense to - so be it. But, any American who can possibly even try to evaluate and analyze the War in Iraq objectively would almost certainly come to the conclusion that if Bush were the leader of another country, invading a neighbor, the U.S. would most likely be up in arms, beating the drums of righteous indignation, calling for a war crimes trial. Oh wait, haven't we already done that? Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein are two recent examples that come to mind, specifically Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, an invasion we went to war over. Desert Storm was a farce in many (but not all) ways. We certainly weren't liberating a democracy, that's for sure. But, I digress.

Anyway, it's important to note that neither Olbermann nor probably the overwhelming majority of liberals (including me) lump our troops under the statement or thoughts behind his label "cold blooded killers." Olbermann in the footage above rightly classifies them as the heroes they truly are, and on this Memorial Day, it's worth mentioning again that we can and must give them the resources they will need, for the rest of their lives, to confront, combat and conquer the physical and emotional obstacles that await them once they return home from battle.

This administration and those who support it make great sport of constantly repeating, over and over, the slogan of this war by many on the home front: Support the Troops. Well, Supporting the Troops is going to take a lot more than putting a ribbon on your car in the coming years. Yet, thus far, this administration has done little more than just that for returning troops, and for many troops in the field, some of whom have had to go without adequate body armor, etc.

At the end of his Special Comment, Olbermann takes one final swipe at two of his critics by saying, "Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin, why do you hate our troops?" I don't know what he's specifically referring to there, but that's bound to stoke the flames of partisan bickering in the weeks and months to come, which will surprise no one. But, in the end, Olbermann is spot on for calling out this administration for its massive, criminal negligence in not giving our troops what they need.

Olbermann truly is a voice in the wilderness - an island of reality in a sea of diarrhea that passes for what many call our "free press," which should be called what it really is - our corporate media. Frankly, it's a miracle that NBC lets him air his show at all. Make no mistake - it's only because there's money to be made, not because of his political views.

Olbermann's Special Comment on Iran's nukes

I haven't posted a Keith Olbermann in a while, but this one is certainly worth sharing - a Special Comment on the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that states that Iran gave up its nuclear program some time ago.

Of course, the war-mongering administration wasn't going to take this news sitting down.

There's not much I can add to this one, other than to say I whole-heartedly agree. Anyone who has been even remotely paying attention ought to be frightened at the roads Bush would love to take us down. The only thing stopping the president and his war cabinet are (God help us) mostly spineless Democrats, and Americans who speak out against another war. I'll go to my grave believing that Bush would have already drummed up a war against Iran had the Democrats not retaken Congress last year. Bush may get his war yet, and I still say that most American's won't care, as long as someone else is doing the fighting.

Probably the only way there will be any sort of significant uprising/backlash against the Bush administration, no matter where we fight and no matter how flimsy the justification, is if there is a draft. Bush knows this, and that's why the military has a massive army of private contractors, who are answerable to no one but the Pentagon, and ultimately, Bush.

My favorite passage from the clip above:

A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency: an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself.

It doesn't get much more succinct than that.

h/t Crooks & Liars

If you missed it: KO's take on Libby pardon

If you think I'm done with the Libby pardon, think again. Not even close. Yes, I'm calling it a pardon, even though the White House is not. I know that two year's probation and the $250,000 fine is an incredible hardship, but I'm sure Libby will, ahem, "survive." I wonder if Halliburton has an opening? One phone call from our favorite Dick will land him a job just about anywhere in the right-wing industrial complex that our creep veep controls. I let out a yelp when I saw that Libby wrote out a check for $250,000 last week to pay his fine. Hmm. Wondering where that generosity came from? But, I digress.

I meant to post this last week, but with the holiday, I forgot. It's still as powerful now as it was when Keith Olbermann delivered it last week.

As usual, Olbermann nails the Libby pardon just as he has so many other Bush missteps in the past few years; it's just too bad that Olbermann wasn't around from about 2002 on - I wonder if all of the things he exposes and offers biting commentary on about this administration would have made just enough of a difference in the 2004 election. We'll never know, but hopefully he'll make a huge difference this year and next.

For those who feel that Olbermann is the left's equivalent of Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, I'd say you don't listen to any of them. I have, and Olbermann is the only one who deals with the facts, not hatred, intolerance or demagoguery. Okay, he does take off on O'Lielly quite a bit, but I overlook that, because that's long overdue, and deserved.

Olbermann special comment on war funding

I know I'm bringing this one to you a bit late, but it's still apropos, and just as powerful as the day Keith Olbermann delivered it a little over a week ago.

This is one Olbermann's best, most powerful special comments in memory. I can't even add much to what he says, only that I emphatically agree. Sen. Harry Reid is an absolute disgrace - I no longer have any confidence whatsoever in his ability to lead the Democrats, and this Congress, to do anything resembling forcing our war-criminal president to withdraw our troops from Iraq.

And quite frankly, I don't have all that much more confidence in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The only solace I have in both Pelosi and Reid leading Congress is that at least they are stirring up debate about this war. But, in reality, that is about all they are doing. However, if Republicans still controlled Congress, there would have been no debate - it would have been another rubber-stamped war funding bill.

I do tire of World War II references in our political discourse, but in this case, Olbermann is right to bring up Neville Chamberlain; because that's exactly who the Democrats resemble right now.

Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and President Bush have all won again - there can be no doubt. I've never seen a party so scared to stand up for what the voters returned them to power for in the first place - to end this war. The Democrats resemble the scrawny geek on the playground who is scared of the class bully (the GOP); all the bully has to do is raise his fist and threaten violence, and the geek runs away.

It's worth noting that Republicans can and must share blame for the continuation of funding for this war - were it not for the large block of Republicans who voted against cutting off funding and putting in time lines for withdraw, the end of this war would be in sight. It's Republicans who prevented veto-proof passage of a bill with time lines for withdraw in both houses of Congress. Where I find major fault with Democrats is that they took one stab at sending Bush a funding bill with withdraw mandates, he vetoed it, and the Dems clapped their hands and sighed, "We tried."

Our troops are no closer to coming home today than they were the day after the elections last November, so the debate over funding is just political posturing that has made no difference in the lives of our soldiers and their families. Tell the troops in Iraq who are fighting, some of whom may die today and tomorrow, that Congress is "debating," and see what type of response you get.

The whole "fund the troops or they will be in jeopardy" is the biggest farce, the worst line of b.s. that I've heard in American politics in years, if not decades. Does anyone HONESTLY BELIEVE that Bush and the military would leave our troops in Iraq to die if they ran out of ammunition, fuel and food of funding were cut off?

The bottom line is that this was a game of political chicken, and the Democrats blinked. This should surprise no one. In the pit of my stomach, I knew the Dems didn't have the political will to do what was right. Republicans simply have a much more powerful, stronger PR and marketing effort in their campaign and efforts for perpetual war.

What's the worst that could have happened to the Democrats if they denied funding to the troops - if they had held their ground? The American public would have been outraged, (and I don't think so) and the Democrats would have lost power in 2008, BUT the troops would have had to be withdrawn from Iraq. Now, the troops remain in harm's way, and the Democrats may lose power anyway because they've been exposed as the spineless wimps they truly are.

Olbermann's Special Comment on Rudy

I just found video of Keith Olbermann taking Giuliani's head off in response to the mayor's comments yesterday. (I've written at length about those comments in the post immediately below this one, so I won't repeat myself here.) Major kudos to Crooks and Liars for getting this footage up so quickly tonight. C&L is always on top of things, and along with HuffPo, is my favorite liberal site on the Internet.

I can't say it enough - I'm grateful for voices like Olbermann's. There are far too few of them in the media, but progressives and liberals are slowly but surely gaining precious ground.

As for Olbermann's Special Comment above, I really can't add anything to what he says in any sage way, but I found one particular passage interesting, and it's the first time I'm hearing it in this very young presidential campaign:

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.

[...]

Which party held the presidency on Sept. 11, 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 potholes, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party wanted what the terrorists wanted — the postponement of 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? [Emphasis Mine]

It still amazes me, after almost six years, that President Bush, and now, Rudy Giuliani get NO heat for 9-11 happening on their watch. I freely admit there's plenty of blame to go around, Democrats included, but what about Rudy's planning (or lack thereof) in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing?

And for those of you who think that link of inquiry is unfair, scroll down and read what Giuliani said yesterday (or watch the video above, again). If he's going to cavort around the country, arrogantly claiming that he can keep the country safer than any other presidential candidate, his record as mayor of New York is going to come under a whole lot closer scrutiny, and rightfully so.

In the end, I think Giuliani will have desperately overplayed his hand, if he hasn't already.