I first became interested in the Libertarian Party because of its strong anti-war stance. In my opinion, it’s the one thing that definitely makes libertarians better than the Republicans or even many Democrats:
“It is time for Iraq to take responsibility for the costs and burdens of rebuilding their country,” says Libertarian Party National Chairman William Redpath, following a new report from the Government Accountability Office stating that Iraq may have a budget surplus of up to $79 billion dollars.
“Using US taxpayer money to pay for the rebuilding of the infrastructure of another nation is bad enough,” says Redpath, “but it is reprehensible and unforgivable when that nation is running a budget surplus while we have a substantial and growing federal budget deficit and a crumbling infrastructure.”
The Libertarian Party has been opposed to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq from the beginning. The Party, which stands adamantly opposed to the use of taxpayer money to support functions of the government not defined in the Constitution, has taken special exception to the use of tax revenues to pay for rebuilding foreign nations.
The Party calls for an end to the Iraq war and a withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq without undue delay.
“It’s a case of tragic irony,” says Libertarian Party spokesperson Andrew Davis. “The American public was told reconstruction efforts in Iraq would be paid for by oil revenues from that country. Now, more than five years later, Americans are shouldering the responsibility of rebuilding Iraq while facing decaying bridges and skyrocketing gas prices.”
“Something is very, very wrong with this picture,” says Davis.
The Libertarian Party is America’s third largest political party, founded in 1971 as an alternative to the two main political parties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party by visiting www.LP.org. The Libertarian Party proudly stands for smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.
For more information on this issue, or to arrange a media interview, please call Andrew Davis at (202) 731-0002.
But most of their positions against governmental intervention seem too extreme and unrealistic. If they would moderate their platform to support smaller government in general instead of taking any absolute positions, then they could gain a larger and more diverse membership and start winning elections at the federal level, which they never have before. Their reluctance to be more moderate is their first mistake. As the Nolan Chart shows, the Libertarian Party needs to be open to all those that would score as “Libertarians”, not just those purists who would be at the uppermost tip of the chart, and perhaps even Liberals, Centrists, and Conservatives well away from the lower (Statist) part of the chart.
Their second mistake is to ally themselves with the Republicans against the Democrats. If the Republicans ever regain power, what’s to stop them from throwing the Libertarians under the bus later to persue power for themselves once more?
A group that is ideologically pure can never take power in a pluralistic democracy. It can only do so by force, which libertarianism does not allow. Therefore, the Libertarians may never take power, though they should. Fortunately, there are some who see this and are working to make the Libertarian Party a more diverse one:
Assuming that they ultimately fail, however, there is another possibility. It would involve libertarians taking over the Republican Party and getting rid of the most hard-core Conservative elements in it. The best example of a libertarian who is also a Republican is Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who ran for President last year.
Either possibility will be fine with me. The status quo of a weak Libertarian Party, a stronger Republican Party still dominated by neo-Conservatism, and a Democratic Party with total power and no accountablity is not!
In my last blog entry, I noted that the New York Times published an article by reporter Brian Stelter claiming that executives at News Corporation and General Electric, the parent companies of FOX News and MSNBC respectively, had arranged a cease-fire between Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann. Subsequent actions by Olbermann proved that article to be false. So what did Stelter do?
Executives at two of the country’s largest media companies are still trying to salvage what was essentially a cease-fire between MSNBC and the Fox News Channel.
The two cable news channels temporarily resumed their long-running feud this week after The New York Times reported that their parent companies, General Electric and the News Corporation, had struck a deal to stop each other’s televised personal attacks.
Fox News executives felt that MSNBC had broken the deal when Keith Olbermann, in an apparent show of independence, insulted his 8 p.m. rival, Bill O’Reilly, and the News Corporation’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, on Monday. On his show, “Countdown,” Mr. Olbermann called Mr. O’Reilly a “racist clown.”
Mr. O’Reilly responded with his own attack two days later on his program, “The O’Reilly Factor,” where he claimed that G.E., through MSNBC, was “promoting the election of Barack Obama and then seeking to profit from his policies.”
The chief executives at General Electric, whose NBC News division operates MSNBC, and News Corporation, which owns Fox News, reached an unusual agreement last spring to halt the regular personal assaults on each other’s channels.
Eric Burns, the former host of Fox’s media criticism show “Fox News Watch” and the author of “All the News Unfit to Print,” said, “Even in an age where there seemed to be no boundaries, people at the very top of two networks thought, ‘Well, I guess there are boundaries, because they’ve been crossed.’ ”
But the agreement was strained almost from the start, according to employees at the channels, even though it mostly succeeded in stopping the vicious personal attacks lobbed by the two hosts until this week.
Despite the renewed tensions, Mr. Murdoch and his counterpart at G.E., Jeffrey R. Immelt, are still seeking a truce in a feud that has embarrassed both companies, said three employees at the companies with direct knowledge of the situation. Mr. Murdoch was said to be particularly incensed by Mr. Olbermann’s and Mr. O’Reilly’s sniping.
The deal extends beyond the prime-time hour that Mr. Olbermann and Mr. O’Reilly occupy. Employees of daytime programs on MSNBC were specifically told by executives not to mention Fox hosts in segments critical of conservative media figures, according to two staff members. The employees requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal matters.
In a statement, G.E. said, “While both companies agreed that the tone should be more civil, no one at G.E. told anyone at NBC News or MSNBC how to report the news.”
Some Fox employees said they were told in June and July not to flagrantly criticize General Electric. Fox said in a statement Friday, “This has nothing to do with preventing anyone from practicing journalism or interfering with freedom of speech — this is about corporate responsibility. We’ve never suppressed any stories about NBC or G.E. — both organizations are covered as news warrants.”
Still, some watchdog groups said the months-long cease-fire challenged the claims that the two media companies did not interfere in their on-air content.
The advocacy group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting asked its supporters on Friday to contact G.E., urging it to renounce the agreement with Fox.
Jeff Cohen, the founder of the group, said the deal between the two networks’ parent companies was a reason to be wary of corporate-owned TV news.
“It should remind news consumers of who calls the tune and pays the bills — and that TV reporters and even loud-mouthed commentators have corporate bosses whose interests are often not about unbridled journalism,” Mr. Cohen said.
Joan Walsh, the editor of Salon.com, said Thursday that it appeared that “the owners of two large news organizations colluded to make sure their audience got less, not more, information, and to promote their business interests, not the public interest.”
She asked, “How is it any different from a media organization making a deal with a politician not to expose a scandal in exchange for a political favor? We’d call that corruption, and I think this is the same thing.”
The executives had sought for years to tamp down the attacks by Mr. Olbermann and Mr. O’Reilly, to little success. Frustrated by the refusal by NBC’s chief executive, Jeffrey Zucker, to halt the attacks on Mr. O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News, personally instructed Mr. O’Reilly’s program to aim at Mr. Immelt, people familiar with the situation said.
Peace talks, such as they were, resumed in the spring between G.E. and News Corporation executives. At a lunch in April, Mr. Ailes and Mr. Immelt agreed to tone down the attacks. It was not visible to viewers until after Mr. Immelt and Mr. Murdoch shook hands at an off-the-record conference sponsored by Microsoft in May and word of a cease-fire trickled down to both news divisions.
Mr. Olbermann told viewers on June 1 that he would halt his jokes about Fox News because he believed that Fox had played a part in inciting the death of the abortion doctor George Tiller. Inside Fox, executives chuckled. They knew that a pact had already been struck by Mr. Olbermann’s bosses to end the feud.
In the months after, when MSNBC would say something that strained the agreement, Fox News would respond accordingly, and vice versa.
In July, after Mr. Olbermann condemned Fox’s Glenn Beck for letting a guest assert that a terrorist attack in the United States might be a good thing, Mr. Beck booked a segment about G.E. and declared that a “merger between G.E. and the Obama administration” was “nearly complete.”
After the detente was reported by The Times on Monday, the fighting resumed and Mr. Olbermann claimed there was no deal among the parent companies. That was met by heated skepticism among bloggers.
Two days later, Mr. O’Reilly had his turn. His news hook: The Securities and Exchange Commission had fined G.E. $50 million on charges of misleading investors. And on Thursday, Mr. O’Reilly showed Mr. Immelt’s and Mr. Zucker’s faces and wondered how long they could allow “this barbaric display” — that is an Olbermann reference — “under the NBC News banner.”
Mr. Olbermann and MSNBC declined to comment Friday.
It remains to be seen whether the personal attacks will be halted again. Fox’s stance on Friday suggested that the corporate criticism would not.
“At this point,” a Fox spokeswoman said Friday, “the entire situation is more about major issues at NBC and G.E. than it is about Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann.”
That is simply a load of bogus crap! Here is a clip from Countdown on June 17, 2009, in which Olbermann made yet another long and scathing attack on FOX News:
Which would lead me to ask, “What cease fire?” It looks like it was business as usual, with the exception of any direct references to Bill O’Reilly. Again, it was because of the George Tiller issue that Olbermann felt he should refrain from making fun of his rival. But any attack on FOX News in general would certainly be an attack on O’Reilly by implication. You don’t make several attacks on a rival during a “cease-fire”.
Finally, on July 17, Olbermann attacked the notion of news organizations agreeing to cover up any actual news, calling it “slimy”. So if Stelter was correct, that means Olbermann is one of the world’s biggest hypocrites. By this time, if there HAD been a deal of some kind between News Corp. and G.E., Olbermann should have been fired.
The fighting wasn’t “resumed” because it never ended! BRIAN STELTER LIED!
So now, I will repeat my demand to the publishers of the New York Times: Brian Stelter committed libel and not only refused to apologize for it, but has repeated his offense. Any reporter that wrote as falsely as he did, I’d have fired within a week, and Stelter should be NOW!
The feud between these TV news titans came to a head on June 1, 2009. The previous day, Dr. George Tiller, who O’Reilly had stigmatized for years as “Tiller the baby killer” because he was one of the few doctors who provided late-term abortions, was shot to death at his Lutheran church by an anti-abortion fanatic.
That prompted Bill O’Reilly to attempt some damage control:
At the same time, Keith Olbermann was dealing with the situation in his own way. He made his most bitter attack against O’Reilly and FOX News yet, accusing them of responsibility for Tiller’s death, and declared that FOX News needed to be subjected to a “quarantine”.
Thus, he made the decision to retire his mocking of O’Reilly, merely being content to quote his words. Frankly, I would have done the same. The whole situation was just too disgusting to make fun of.
And that’s where it stood until July 31, when this article was published in the New York Times:
It was a media cage fight, televised every weeknight at 8 p.m. But the match was halted when the blood started to spray executives in the high-priced seats.
For years Keith Olbermann of MSNBC had savaged his prime-time nemesis Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel and accused Fox of journalistic malpractice almost nightly. Mr. O’Reilly in turn criticized Mr. Olbermann’s bosses and led an exceptional campaign against General Electric, the parent company of MSNBC.
It was perhaps the fiercest media feud of the decade and by this year, their bosses had had enough. But it took a fellow television personality with a neutral perspective to help bring it to at least a temporary end.
Both moguls expressed regret over the venomous culture between the networks and the increasingly personal nature of the barbs. Days later, even though the feud had increased the audience of both programs, their lieutenants arranged a cease-fire, according to four people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal.
In early June, the combat stopped, and MSNBC and Fox, for the most part, found other targets for their verbal missiles (Hello, CNN).
“It was time to grow up,” a senior employee of one of the companies said.
The reconciliation — not acknowledged by the parties until now — showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations. A G.E. shareholders’ meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. O’Reilly’s producers) last April.
“We all recognize that a certain level of civility needed to be introduced into the public discussion,” Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for G.E., said this week. “We’re happy that has happened.”
The parent companies declined to comment directly on the details of the cease-fire, which was orchestrated in part by Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, and Gary Ginsberg, an executive vice president who oversees corporate affairs at the News Corporation.
Mr. Olbermann, who is on vacation, said by e-mail message, “I am party to no deal,” adding that he would not have been included in any conversations between G.E. and the News Corporation. Fox News said it would not comment.
Civility was not always the aim of Mr. Olbermann and Mr. O’Reilly, men who, in an industry of thin skins, are both famous for reacting to verbal pinpricks. Both host 8 p.m. programs on cable news in studios a few blocks apart in Midtown Manhattan.
The conservative-leaning Mr. O’Reilly has turned “The O’Reilly Factor” into a profit center for the News Corporation by blitzing his opponents and espousing his opinions unapologetically. He found his bête noire in the liberal-leaning Mr. Olbermann, the host of MSNBC’s “Countdown,” who saw in Mr. O’Reilly a regenerating target he nicknamed the “Bill-o the Clown.”
The 6-foot-4 Mr. Olbermann started sniping regularly at the also 6-foot-4 Mr. O’Reilly in late 2005, sometimes making him the subject of the “Countdown” segment, the “Worst Person in the World.” Mr. O’Reilly was also a stand-in for the perceived offenses of the top-rated Fox News.
By punching up at his higher-rated prey, Mr. Olbermann helped his own third-place cable news show. “Honestly, I should send him a check each week,” he remarked to a reporter three years ago. Fox noticed. Mr. Murdoch remarked to Esquire last year that “Keith Olbermann is trying to make a business out of destroying Bill O’Reilly.” Mr. O’Reilly refused to mention his critic by name on the “Factor,” deeming him a “vicious smear merchant,” but he regularly blamed Mr. Zucker for “ruining a once-great brand,” NBC.
In late 2007, Mr. O’Reilly had a young producer, Jesse Watters, ambush Mr. Immelt and ask about G.E.’s business in Iran, which is legal, and which includes sales of energy and medical technology. G.E. says it no longer does business in Iran.
Mr. O’Reilly continued to pour pressure on its corporate leaders, even saying on one program last year that “If my child were killed in Iraq, I would blame the likes of Jeffrey Immelt.” The resulting e-mail to G.E. from Mr. O’Reilly’s viewers was scathing.
The messages hit nerves on both sides. Mr. Immelt remarked to MSNBC staff members last summer that he would “never forgive Rupert Murdoch” for Fox’s behavior, according to two people who were present. In private phone calls, the Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes, told NBC officials to end the attacks.
In February, Mr. Zucker told Newsweek what he had told Mr. Olbermann privately: “I wish it weren’t so personal.” The previous year, Mr. Murdoch said that Mr. O’Reilly “shouldn’t be so sensitive” to the attacks lobbed by MSNBC.
Over time, G.E. and the News Corporation concluded that the fighting “wasn’t good for either parent,” said an NBC employee with direct knowledge of the situation. But the session hosted by Mr. Rose provided an opportunity for a reconciliation, sealed with a handshake between Mr. Immelt and Mr. Murdoch.
But like any title fight, the final round could not end without an attempted knockout. On June 1, the day after the abortion provider George Tiller was killed in Kansas, Mr. Olbermann took to the air to cite Mr. O’Reilly’s numerous references to “Tiller, the baby killer” and to announce that he would retire his caricature of Mr. O’Reilly.
“The goal here is to get this blindly irresponsible man and his ilk off the air,” he said.
The next day, Mr. O’Reilly made the extraordinary claim that “federal authorities have developed information about General Electric doing business with Iran, deadly business” and published Mr. Immelt’s e-mail address and mailing address, repeating it slowly for emphasis.
Then the attacks mostly stopped.
Shortly after, Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president, told producers that he wanted the channel’s other programs to follow Mr. Olbermann’s lead and restrain from criticizing Fox directly, according to two employees. At Fox News, some staff members were told to “be fair” to G.E.
The executives at both companies, it appears, were relieved. “For this war to stop, it meant fewer headaches on the corporate side,” one employee said.
Tensions still simmer between the two networks, however, and staff members have been unwilling or unable to stop the strife altogether. This week, for instance, the Fox host Glenn Beck called Mr. Obama a racist, prompting rebukes on a number of MSNBC shows. But for now, the daily back and forth has quieted.
“They’ve won their respective constituencies,” said a former member of MSNBC’s senior staff. “They don’t need to do this anymore, really.”
Olbermann was returning from a two week vacation. When he resumed hosting his show on August 3, he addressed that article directly:
He must have been furious! Had he kept his word and never made fun of Bill O’Reilly again, it would have made him look like a corporate shill, not a legitimate newsman. So in this case, he had to break his word in order to preserve his credibility!
And his action proved to be justified on August 11, when O’Reilly attacked General Electric the parent company of MSNBC:
Thus it appears there was no deal on the side of O’Reilly and FOX News as well. Olbermann shot back the next evening:
So now, I have just one question: Has Brian Stelter been fired from the New York Times yet?
Oh and by the way, Keith Olbermann would not need to do damage control if someone was insane enough to kill Bill O’Reilly. He already denounced one such threat made against his rival on August 19, 2008. That’s right, ONE YEAR AGO!
Conspiracy nut. Obsessive extremist. Racist who accuses others of racism to cover his @$$. That’s Glenn Beck, who calls himself a libertarian but acts more like a member of the John Birch Society of several decades ago. And he doesn’t belong on television, unless you also think Ku Klux Klansmen also belong on TV.
I wonder if he would think I am racist and hate white culture too. Since I am white myself, of course that is nonsense. Likewise, Barack Obama is himself half-white and was raised by this white mother and white grandparents.
And if you see something “wrong” with trying to level the playing field for people of all colors, then you are a race-baiter yourself.
And he loses it at a rude caller and makes himself look totally stupid:
He also gets caught lying about stupid stuff on the View:
And has even made an idiotic threat against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which was simply not funny:
And perhaps worst of all, he made a joke about Michael Jackson on the day he died:
Corporate advertisers are already abandoning Beck.
It took him a long time, but CNN President Jon Klein finally got around to doing what he should have done a long time ago. In order to maintain the professed trademarkof his network for objectivity in broadcasting, he realized he had no choice but to fire Lou Dobbs.Of course, cautious as he is, Klein did not fire the anti-immigration crusader directly, or even alone. He threw Dobbs overboard as part of a vendetta against radio talk-show hosts in general.
As first reported on the Website TVNewser.com, in a conference call on Aug. 11, Klein told his producers they should no longer book radio talk-show hosts on CNN shows: not on “The Situation Room,” nor Larry King, Anderson Cooper or Campbell Brown. From now on, said his edict, no radio talkers will appear on CNN. Period.
Why? Because, argued Klein, radio talk-show hosts are incapable of understanding or commenting on the important issues of the day. “Complex issues require world-class reporting,” sniffed Klein. Not only that, TVNewser.com quotes Klein as complaining that radio hosts too often do nothing more than “contribute to the noise,” and their comments are “all too predictable.”
Klein’s dead wrong, of course. Yes, we Americans do confront complex issues today, but radio talk-show hosts like me, whether liberal or conservative, are more than capable of dealing with them. After all, that’s what we do for a living. We research the issues. We explain them to listeners. We take listener calls about them. We talk about them, on average, three hours a day – without a teleprompter. We understand the issues far better, in fact, than any blow-dried anchor that does little more than read a script, written by somebody else, for one hour at the most.
Now, I must admit, I was both puzzled and disappointed to learn of Klein’s manifesto. Puzzled because radio talk-show hosts have long played an important role at the network. “Crossfire” actually began with two talk radio hosts, Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden. Other CNN personalities of yesterday or today – Larry King, Mary Matalin, Bill Bennett, Roland Martin, Glenn Beck and yours truly – hosted, or continue to host, their own radio shows.
I’m disappointed by Klein’s decision because I enjoyed six good years at CNN – as co-host of “Crossfire” and “The Spin Room.” Since leaving the network (not voluntarily), I have jumped at the chance to appear occasionally as an unpaid guest on “The Situation Room,” “Reliable Sources” or other CNN programs. I’m a big CNN fan, and I’ll miss being part of it.
But my grief is more than outweighed by one giant consolation: At least, this means the end of that pompous, arrogant and obnoxious Lou Dobbs. After all, Lou Dobbs is also a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. So Klein’s edict – “No Radio Talk Show Hosts on CNN” – must mean the end of Lou Dobbs.
And it’s about time. Dobbs contradicts everything CNN supposedly stands for. He doesn’t just report, he pontificates. He doesn’t just deliver the news, he pollutes it with his own opinions. He doesn’t even pretend to be in the middle of the road, he exults in being on the extreme right.
Actually, Klein missed two excellent opportunities to fire Dobbs. First, when Dobbs assumed the role of chief executioner for undocumented workers. No fine points about breaking up families or crippling certain American industries for Dobbs. If they’re here illegally, they should be sent back across the border, all 12 million of them. It’s the kind of daily rant you expect from right-wing Fox News, but not from “news leader” CNN.
Klein should also have dumped Dobbs for fanning the flames of the “birther” issue. Long after every serious news operation had dismissed questions about the authenticity of President Obama’s birth certificate as totally whacko, Dobbs kept beating the birther drum on CNN. But, instead of admonishing him to stick to “world-class reporting,” Klein himself said Dobbs was raising a legitimate issue.
Still, better late than never. We now know Lou Dobbs will be fired because we know Jon Klein is a man of his word. After all, he’s the president of CNN, “the most trusted name in news.” Surely, Klein would never ban all radio talk-show hosts from CNN and leave talk show host Lou Dobbs on the air. Would he?
The title of that article is totally misleading, since there is no confirmation that Lou Dobbs has been fired from CNN yet. So why did Bill Press write such nonsense?
Indeed, there is no link on the article to the original report on TVNewser.com, nor is there any confirmation on the website for CNN. See for yourself that the site for Lou Dobbs’ show on CNN is still up as of this writing:
So here we have an unconfirmed report about something that the CNN President supposedly said and it is posted not on the CNN website itself, but as commentary on another website without a shred of proof!
BILL PRESS, YOU ARE EVEN WORSE THAN LOU DOBBS HIMSELF! In the name of journalistic integrity, I demand that you retract your bogus statement and issue a formal apology to CNN and to Lou Dobbs!
Update: I finally found the report on TVNewser.com referred to by Bill Press, thanks to MediaMatters for America:
Yesterday, TVNewser reported that CNN president Jon Klein “asked his show producers to avoid booking talk radio hosts.” According to TVNewser, this was Klein’s reasoning:
“Complex issues require world class reporting,” Klein is quoted as saying, adding that talk radio hosts too often add to the noise, and that what they say is “all too predictable.”
TVNewser writes that Lou Dobbs — who hosts both a radio show and a CNN show — is “presumably not affected by this.”
Tuesday, Aug 11
No More Talk Radio Hosts on CNN?
Exclusive: TVNewser has learned, and a CNN spokesperson confirms, that in his morning editorial meeting today, CNN/U.S. president Jon Klein asked his show producers to avoid booking talk radio hosts. “Complex issues require world class reporting,” Klein is quoted as saying, adding that talk radio hosts too often add to the noise, and that what they say is “all too predictable.”
One of CNN’s longtime show hosts, Lou Dobbs, hosts a daily radio show. A few political contributors also host radio shows including Bill Bennett and Roland Martin. They are presumably not affected by this.
But this means other talk radio hosts who appear regularly on CNN, probably won’t in the near future including names like Stephanie Miller, Michael Medved, and Ben Ferguson.
> Update: Roland Martin stopped hosting his show on WVON last October when he became senior analyst for the “Tom Joyner Morning Show.”
Posted by Chris Ariens
So here is a report that couldn’t possibly be true. Are they implying that the CNN President is so ignorant that he didn’t know that Lou Dobbs hosts a radio program? And why wouldn’t any of the producers ask him directly if Lou Dobbs was to be fired as a result of this order?
I hereby write off TVNewser.com as a reliable news source!
I first took notice of Keith Olbermann when I happened to see a video on YouTube of him condemning President Bush for his conduct during the Iraq War.
I thought that was quite amazing, but then I saw these special reports on Bill O’Reilly, which totally blew me away!
You can’t get more damning than that! There are only two possibilities: Either Olbermann slandered Bill O’Reilly (in which case Bill O and FOX News should have sued Keith O and MSNBC as a matter of honor), or he told the truth (in which case FOX News should have fired Bill O). There is no third option. The fact that no slander lawsuit was ever filed and that O’Reilly works at FOX News to this day shows beyond all reasonable doubt that FOX News is a channel with no integrity whatsoever.
Here’s another example of Olbermann busting O’Reilly for falsehoods relating to World War II:
And unlike Bill O, who never makes an apology for his mistaken statements, Keith O does! One evening, he slammed New York Times managing editor Bill Keller for not firing a reporter who had not only printed a false story, but had committed plagerism to boot!
But the very next night, Keith O apologized for his condemnation of Keller. Appearantly, Olbermann had never worked at that newspaper before and knew nothing beforehand about how it was run. So he practiced what he preached!
There is no question that MSNBC is slanted towards the Liberal perspective. I suspect that was done because of FOX News appealing so much to right-wingers, so MSNBC had to balance it out. FOX News certainly has no business calling itself “fair and balanced”, nor does Bill O’Reilly have any business calling his show a “no spin zone”. Look at how arrogantly he dealt with Richard Dawkins:
….and then with Kirk Cameron, treating him with kid gloves while continuing to bash Dawkins:
And he even got into a shouting match with Geraldo Rivera over illegal immigration and drunk driving! How unprofessional!
Meanwhile, Olbermann took on Wal-Mart for several days to expose its terrible wrongdoing towards a disabled former employee:
Until Wal-Mart was forced to back down:
Now, those blind and moronic FOX News fans who call Olbermann a liar, without specifying what he lied about, are YOU going to file a slander lawsuit against him? Is anyone? If not, SHUT UP! In matters of credibility and honor, Keith Olbermann beats anyone at FOX News hands down! The only reason you distrust Olbermann is political prejudice, the irrational assumption that somehow Conservatives have a monopoly on truth and virtues and therefore anyone non-Conservative must be misguided, dishonest, even evil. WRONG! Grow up and deal with real life and not the nationalistic crap you’ve been spoon fed since you were babies!
When I was a child, I had absolute faith in God, in my parents and my country, like most children tend to have. In 1979, I would watch the news and see reports about American hostages being taken in Iran, about the Shah being deposed, and about Iranians chanting “Death to America!”, and I couldn’t understand why. What had we Americans ever done to Iran? I got the impression that the Iranians were evil people who hated us just because we were different.
But years later, I attended college and it wasn’t until then that I finally learned the truth: that in 1953, we Americans, through the CIA, had helped overthrow a democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran and allowed the Shah to take absolute power there. Why? Because that Prime Minister had attempted to nationalize the oil fields owned and operated by British and American oil companies, in HIS OWN COUNTRY! WHAT ARROGANCE AND HYPOCRISY WE DISPLAYED BACK THEN! NO WONDER THE IRANIANS WERE SO ANGRY! But in 1979, these disgraceful facts were never revealed by the mainstream media. The implication was that the Islamic Revolution of Iran had occured for no logical reason. But that was a lie of omission.
If someone like Keith Olbermann had been around in 1979 reporting the political news and slamming reporters of other networks for screwing with the truth, perhaps we would have learned the truth about the Iranian situation much sooner and we the people would not have been stupid enough to elect Ronald Reagan as the next President of the United States.
In any case, it was me learning the truth about Iran and what we did to it that made me reject forever the Conservative Republican politics of my parents and most of my other relatives. I wised up, and it’s about time millions of Americans did also and stopped acting like SHEEP being led to their slaughter by the pied pipers of FOX News and the Republican leaders.
Keep up the good work, Keith Olbermann. This Honorable Skeptic salutes you and hopes to see you on the air for many years to come!
Jindal is the governor of Louisiana, and is a supporter of Intelligent Design. He also completely sold out his Indian heritage. But that’s not the worst thing about him. What really bothers me is that he SUX at dealing with issues and speaking to the people. UGH!
On February 24, 2009 Jindal delivered the official Republican response to President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress. Jindal called the president’s economic stimulus plan “irresponsible” and argued against government intervention.[42] He used Hurricane Katrina to warn against government solutions to the economic crisis. “Today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us,” Jindal said. “Those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina, we have our doubts.” He praised the late sheriff Harry Lee for standing up to the government during Katrina.[43][44] David Johnson, a Republican political strategist criticized Jindal’s mention of Hurrican Katrina stating ““The one thing Republicans want to forget is Katrina.”[45] Jindal’s speech was poorly received even among some Republicans,[46][47] conservative commentators were among his harshest critics, calling his speech “a disaster for the Republican Party”.[45][48]
Jindal’s story of meeting Lee in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was questioned following the speech, as Jindal was not in New Orleans at the time.[49] On February 27, 2009, a spokesman for Jindal clarified the timing of the meeting, stating that the story took place days after the storm.[50]
So lame it gave me a headache! Is Louisiana really a state of morons?
Republicans, you are in serious trouble! Ditch Jindal and find someone like Dwight Eisenhower to revive your party, or it will die out like the dinosaurs did!
Unless, of course, you beleive the spin of FOX News:
I have decided to join in the efforts to have Lou Dobbs, the anti-immigrant and anti-Obama fanatic, fired from CNN for his irrational obsessions, which have brought disgrace to the CNN channel. To learn more, go here:
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 