Countdown
The same day an MSNBC host admitted to being a socialist on national television, America's only openly socialist member of Congress came out in defense of Keith Olbermann after the "Countdown" host was suspended indefinitely for violating NBC's campaign finance rules.
If you needed any more proof of just how far to the left this so-called news network is, you should look no further than what Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) published at the Huffington Post Friday:
Editor's Note: MRC President Brent Bozell issued the following statement in reaction to news that MSNBC had suspended Countdown host Keith Olbermann "indefinitely" for donating to three Democratic candidates in violation of NBC's policy. In October, Olbermann had blasted political donations from Fox News owner News Corp, slamming Fox as "a media outlet that has now put its money where everybody has known its mouth has always been."
Keith Olbermann is officially the Worst Hypocrite in the World. He rails about a ‘national cable news outlet’ that ‘starts to donate to partisan groups of one party,’ then does exactly that.
But it begs a bigger questions: why did it take NBC so long? This man has been using his perch as a newsman at MSNBC to promote a radical left-wing and hate-filled agenda for years. And they fire him over three contributions? NBC needs to review its own policies.”
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Updates abound. Check below the fold for much, much more.
MSNBC suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely today after news broke that he had given the maximum allowable contribution to three Democrats without disclosing it to his viewers.
CBS News reported on the suspension about 20 minutes ago, with a more detailed statement from MSNBC brass:
"I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night," Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC, said in a statement. "Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay."
On Thursday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, as he plugged a segment on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s appeal to President Obama to cooperate with the GOP, host Keith Olbermann suggested that Obama should "kick" the "ass" of McConnell rather than surrender to the Republican Senator’s demands. Referring to McConnell during a plug, Olbermann complained: "Once again, he honestly explains what compromise means: agreeing with him. And instead of kicking him in the ass, the President agrees to sit down and chat."
After a few more plugs in which the Countdown host mocked McConnell for asking Obama to move in the Republican direction on issues, Olbermann got to the segment and played a clip of the Senate Republican Leader speaking to the conservative Heritage Foundation. After bringing aboard the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman, the MSNBC host held his hands over his head and began the discussion: "Forgive me. I have to deal with this headache immediately, so I'm doing this right at the moment."
He soon asked Fineman if President Obama would ever realize that trying to compromise with Republicans "hasn’t gotten me a lick of spit" and give up:
Keith Olbermann has become very upset lately at people who claim MSNBC and Fox News are two sides of the same coin - ideological cable news counterparts. Olbermann is right to object to that characterization, but not for the reason he thinks.
Unlike his 8 pm Fox News competitor Bill O'Reilly, Olbermann prefers not to have dissenting voices on his show. According to Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky, Olbermann did not host a single conservative on "Countdown" last week. O'Reilly, meanwhile, brought 11 liberals on his show.
When MSNBC’s Chris Matthews starts to rationalize the American electorate’s temperate, get out of the way.
On MSNBC’s Nov. 2 election coverage, “Hardball” host Chris Matthews offered his assessment of how the Democrats and President Barack Obama found themselves in such dire straits. He said it started with the left’s favorite boogeyman of the past, President George W. Bush.
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Although the Rally to Restore Sanity definitely had a decidedly liberal tinge to it, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart did his level best to ensure his official message was that of "a pox on both your houses" to raised voices on the Right and Left in cable news media.
Of course the thin-skinned host of MSNBC's "Countdown" won't have any of it, leaving liberal fans of both Stewart and Olbermann torn between the two.
For his part, equally thin-skinned and mercurial Joe Klein sided with Stewart in a Swampland blog post at Time.com today:
On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, CNN host Howard Kurtz pressed guest Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post on her hypocrisy for calling for more civility in political discourse even while she is a regular guest on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown show on MSNBC. After Kurtz asked if MSNBC was as much of a problem as FNC, she charged that "misinformation" disseminated by FNC is "monumental" compared to MSNBC:
Definitely not as much of the problem. Have they exaggerated? Yes, they would admit it themselves. But the constant barrage of misinformation being put out by Glenn Beck, by O'Reilly, by Hannity is just monumental. I mean, this is a factual record that has been compiled of what they're saying.
She also rationalized her appearances with Olbermann by giving him credit for a lame apology the MSNBC host once addressed to Jon Stewart after Stewart called him out for viciously attacking Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts. Huffington: "Well, Keith Olbermann actually apologized for that statement, for that particular statement. Have you ever seen anybody apologize except maybe Glenn Beck when he called the President a racist?"
On Wednesday’s Countdown show, during a 21-minute "Special Comment," MSNBC host Keith Olbermann warned American voters against electing Tea Party Republicans to power, whom he suggested are "unqualified, unstable individuals" who will take America "backward to Jim Crow, or backward to the breadlines of the ‘30s, or backward to hanging union organizers." He then made a play off MSNBC’s "Lean Forward" slogan to disparage the Tea Party movement as he declared: "Vote backward, vote Tea Party."
After reading a list of controversial quotes and policy positions he disagreed with that have been spoken by a list of Tea Party-backed Republican candidates, whom he referred to as "cranks, menaces, mercenaries and authoritarians," he went on to suggest that the Tea Party movement is a greater threat than America’s foreign enemies, and preemptively blamed those who would vote for these candidates as having "enabled" a "cataclysm": "If you sit there next Tuesday, if you sit there tomorrow, and the rest of this week, and you let this cataclysm unfold, you have enabled this. It is one thing to be attacked by those who would destroy America from without. It is a worse thing to be attacked by those who would destroy America from within."
Appearing as a guest on Tuesday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman – formerly of Newsweek – joined substitute host Cenk Uygur in mocking Delaware Republican Senate nominee and the Tea Party as Uygur discussed O’Donnell’s recent comments about the words "separation of church and state" not being in the Consititution. After Uygur asked if the views of the Delaware Republican "speak poorly of the people who elected her, namely the Tea Party voters," Fineman agreed with Uygur’s negative view of the Tea Party and went on to trash Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle as he contended that O’Donnell "makes Sharron Angle look like Doris Kearns Goodwin." Fineman:
Yeah, it probably doesn’t help the Tea Party at all. I mean, I suppose you could argue that having Christine O’Donnell around and speaking the way she did today makes Sharron Angle look like Doris Kearns Goodwin or something. But it, you know, that’s the only way she might be useful as a point of contrast. And what’s really killing here, what’s damning here is that the Tea Party is run in the name of rights and freedom. And all of those rights and freedoms are enshrined in the very amendments that she seems totally ignorant of.
Fineman also made no mention of the legitimate debate over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and whether the children of illegal immigrants born in America should be considered natural-born American citizens as he mocked conservatives over the Fourteenth Amendment: "And, you know, they’re some of the amendments that they’re also questioning right now because the Fourteenth Amendment basically says that everyone here who’s born here, naturalized here, is a citizen of the United States, and their rights cannot be abridged by any of the states. And yet, the sort of local orientation of the Tea Party, you heard Christine O’Donnell talk about local option. what the local people want to do. You know, that’s something that is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment."
On Monday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann mocked Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, tagging her as "Worst Person in the World," for her recent declaration in an interview with World Net Daily that she would like to dine with Jesus Christ, Ann Coulter and a number of other historical and public figures. In addition to cracking that Coulter would accuse Jesus of being gay and that conservative talk radio host Mark Levin would "run out on the check," the MSNBC host concluded that Jesus would try to stop Bachmann and presumably other conservatives from "mak[ing] the House of Representatives a house of morons."
Olbermann: "Coulter would question Jesus’s sexuality. Levin would run out on the check. And Jesus would shout, "Get these out of here. Do not make the House of Representatives a house of morons," and then turn over the table. You know, like in the Real Housewives of New Jersey."
The Countdown host went on to mock the conservative concept of adhering to the original intent of the Constitution as meaning slavery would be legal and that women would not have the right to vote. Olbermann: