Keith Olbermann

I give MoveOn.org this much. When it comes to their friends they never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

This weeks's meme is the man who will humble corporate control of government is Connecticut Senate candidate and Nancy Pelosi lackey Chris Murphy

One year ago today, the Supreme Court gave corporations the same First Amendment rights as you and me, in the Citizens United decision. And in the last election, we saw what this corporate takeover of our democracy looks like, with a record-setting $4 billion spent on the elections.1

Connecticut Rep. Chris Murphy has been a leader in the fight to rein in corporate control of our democracy. He was one of the first signers of our Fight Washington Corruption pledge, which included a call to overturn Citizens United, and he organized other congressional candidates to join him and "take back our democracy from the big corporate special interests who have so dominated our political decision making in the last decade."2

A corporate front group targeted Rep. Murphy with over a million dollars in attack ads in retaliation for his bold stand3, but Rep. Murphy fought hard, and with help from local MoveOn members, won in November.

Yesterday, Rep. Murphy announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Joe Lieberman. It's exciting that as a champion in fighting corporate influence in Washington, Chris Murphy can make this a real issue in the race for Senate.

Will you call Rep. Murphy to thank him for his leadership on this issue? Then, ask him to make sure the issue of corporate influence remains front and center in the Senate race over the next two years by encouraging all the candidates to speak out forcefully on the need to rid our political system of corporate influence.

Now, the rest of the story about Chris Murphy and the corporate buyout of the federal treasury.

MoveOn doesn't tell folks Chris Murphy received well over $2 million from special interest PACs  

MoveOn doesn;t tell people Chris Murphy has raised over $1 million from the financial services industry. Which comes as little surprise as Murphy served on the House Banking Committee when it approved the 2008 TARP bailout.   Indeed, Murphy voted for the $700 Billion TARP bailout withing hours of receiving a large contribution from the American Bankers Association.

So, when did Murphy decide it was time to start fighting corporate influence in Washington? Oh. maybe it was during the health care reform fight....umm...no since the Pharma lobby ran a blitz of issue ads praising Murphy.   Did those ads explain Murphy's flip-flop on allowing drug reimportation? Hey, decide for yourself.

No, Chris Murphy suddenly decided corporate money in politics was a bad thing when the corporations that didn't like health care reform paid for ads against him. The contributions from special interests to stuff his 7 figure warchest and the slick issue ads promoting his agenda, well, then it was good government. 

Incumbent politicians don't like Citizens United for the same reason Microsoft doesn't like Macs. When you have a monopoly you want to stifle the means of competition. You want the people whose industries are at risk to come to you on bended knee, checkbook in hand. How dare these people complain directly to the public!  

You see, it's all about protecting your investment. And MoveOn has invested a lot in Chris Murphy.  He was their Number one recipient of campaign cash in 2006. So when a group like AAF  opposed to big government runs the same type of ad MoveOn ran, take MoveOn's umbrage with a grain of salt. And also understand why MoveOn looks the other way when their boy Murphy ladels out trillions to bankers and drug companies. They are going to stand by their man.  Getting him into the Senate will pay a return on their investment.

And this investment may suddenly go sour if the new darling of the hard left, Keith Olbermann  is persuaded to run for the open Connecticut Senate seat.  How could the unctuous Murphy and his corporate liberalism compete with the 200 decibel leftism of Olby? 

The problem with investing millions of dollars in a product is after awhile, a newer brand goes on the market. MoveOn and Murphy may find their base of support has moved on to a guy who only took millions from Corporate America to call conservatives the worst people in the world. Heh   

'Cuse stuns Cornell for 2nd straight lacrosse title

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) - Cody Jamieson scored his second goal of the game just 80 seconds into overtime as Syracuse rallied from a three-goal deficit in the final 3:37 of regulation to beat Cornell 10-9 on Monday and win its second straight NCAA lacrosse championship

The Big Red took a 9-6 lead with 5:31 left in the fourth before the Orange came back to win their unprecedented 11th college lacrosse title.

Two questions, Keith:

a) Are you going to declare your lax coach the "worst person in the world" for letting his team give up four unanswered goals in a national title game?

b) Did they teach the Heimlich Maneuver at the Ag school when you were there? 

Screw the Ivies! Let's Go Orange

A survey found that 65% of Daily Kos' discussion of a recent Olbermann segment is negative.  

Last week, Fox News' Sean Hannity made an off-the-cuff offer to partake in waterboarding for charity, an announcement that MSNBC's Keith Olbermann met with his own charity offer.

"For every second you last, a thousand dollars -- live or on tape, provided other networks' cameras are there," the MSNBC anchor said. "A thousand dollars a second, Sean, because this is no game. This is serious stuff. Put your money where your mouth is, and your nose. Oh, and I'll double it when you admit you feared for your life, when you admit the horrible truth -- waterboarding, the symbol of the last administration, is torture."

Over the past few years, members of the liberal blogosphere have been among Olbermann's most ardent supporters, perhaps none more so than the diarists at Daily Kos. During every show of his the community hosts an "open thread" and Olbermann himself often blogs at the liberal site.

But the negative response the Kos community had for this Olbermann segment and others indicates a certain level of animosity is growing towards the MSNBC host. As of this writing, Olbermann's charity offer has spawned nine diary posts and nearly 1,400 comments at Daily Kos. I surveyed a sizable percentage of these comments and found that approximately 65% of the discussion of Olbermann is negative. About 30% of the comments are positive, while the remaining 5% is neutral.

"Someone should ask Olbermann why he would want to inflict any such treatment on any other living human," one commenter wrote. "And, if what he is proposing comes up short of what we did with our 'enhanced interrogation techniques' what's to be gained by giving Hannity any attention."

Much of the negative coverage followed in this vein, while Olbermann supporters said that the anchor's offer was a good idea, one that would finally teach Hannity that waterboarding constitutes torture.

"I disagree," one person wrote. "This is co-opting Hannity's stunt. I think Hannity is now in a losing position. Either he backs out, or Olbermann makes some actual good come out of Fox News."

This isn't the first indication that the Daily Kos community has soured on Olbermann. When CNBC's Jim Cramer appeared on the Daily Show -- an appearance that many considered an embarrassment to CNBC and its parent company -- the Kos community harshly criticized Olbermann for not highlighting the interview on his show. Many accused him of bowing down to alleged demands that MSNBC anchors not mention the Cramer/Stewart interview. Olbermann himself showed up in the comment threads to defend himself from these charges.

But if this is a sign that the Kossacks have turned on Olbermann, who will take his place in the cable news lineup as the liberal blogosphere's darling? Both Rachel Maddow and (ironically) FNC's Sheppard Smith have been getting favorable coverage from Daily Kos in recent months. Might one of them become the blog's newest champion?

Simon Owens is a media journalist and social media consultant. Email him at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com or read more of his writing at his blog

Greetings all.

The drive-by's are out to make Governor Perry look nuts for his speech at today's morning tea party in Austin.  I just saw an Olbermann segment on the topic.  They're taking Governor Perry so far out of context, it's almost cute.

While the drive by's are trying to portray Governor Perry as some sort of seccessionist nut, the fact is he spoke mostly about how Texas has Low taxes, a Stable Regulatory climate, an educated workforce, Tort Reform, and is the #1 exporter in the United States.  Don't let the drive by's fool you.

I can't find the full speech anywhere, so I'll leave you with this YouTube of the Governor

Update: Here's the full speech.

I hope this helps.

That is all.

Cahnman out.

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As the host of MSNBC’s “Countdown”, Keith Olbermann has established himself as the premier television journalist in America in the eyes of left-leaning political junkies. Having broken free of the intellectually stifling environment of sports broadcasting, Olbermann tackled his new assignment with all the élan of Andrei Chikatilo on his first day as janitor at the Moscow Home for Unwed Mothers. His enthusiasm has paid dividends, drawing viewers in the near six-digit range to the nightly broadcast in which he delights in lampooning the most newsworthy right wing figures of the day.

Success has made Olbermann a very busy man, which makes landing an interview with him a Herculean task for a right-leaning journalist. It was through sheer monomaniacal persistence that I was able to get a few minutes of his time to sit down for the following one-on-one. I hope the reader will find it as enlightening as I did.

Keith Olbermann: It’s Mr. Olbermann. You don’t know me. You have no right to address me by my first name without first getting my permission. 

You see, that’s the problem with you right wingers. You see the world and all its people as nothing more than automatons that you can program to do your nefarious bidding through lies, deceit and unconscionable treachery. You see yourselves as the great puppet masters of humanity, pulling the strings of ignorance to elicit the Pavlovian responses that keep you in power. You have no respect for human dignity. You do not care that the world is soaked in the blood of children as a consequence of your quest for power and wealth. You sow fear and hatred wherever you plod as you lay one jackbooted foot before the last, traversing the globe in your diabolical bloodlust. Control is your unholy grail. And the crushed souls of the victims who lie in your path are little more than “collateral damage”, as you euphemistically view it in your Mephistophelean minds.
 

W.G.:  Thank you. If I may, I would just like to begin by telling you how much of a fan I was of your work when you were at ESPN. I found you to be a very entertaining sportscaster, and often laughed out loud at your obscure references and ironic critiques.  What made you decide to move on from that genre of broadcasting?

K.O.: The growing popularity of NASCAR, in spite of my persistent mockery and derision, led me to conclude that the sports world is populated by a vast collection of chaw-spitting dullards worthy of no more respect than the garden slugs they represent on an intellectual level. All the swinging of sticks and throwing of balls for the entertainment of poltroons in the stands lost what minimally redeeming value it had when it finally occurred to me that the sports world was being overrun by the bastard sons of backwoods moonshiners and sister-courting simpletons who know nothing beyond how to make a left turn while strapped into a sheet metal-covered cage bolted onto an outrageously expensive wad of nuts, bolts and wires designed to do nothing more than ravage the planet we temporarily call a home, yet treat with no more concern for the future than is attributable to the common housefly. The tedious conversations with slack-jawed rubes and the monotonous recitation of meaningless facts and statistics became so mind-numbingly repetitive that I could no more imagine myself enduring another day of it than I could imagine myself standing before the throng of tuxedo-clad fatheads at the Espies in a singlet and cowboy boots.

W.G.:  So, you’ve lost all interest in sports? I think a lot of readers will find that shocking, given that it was your calling for so many years. What made you decide to go into the world of political commentary?

K.O.: I don’t care what your so-called “readers” find shocking, frankly. In fact, it was the people who make up your so-called “readership” that drew me out of that tar papered hovel they called a studio in Connecticut and into my corner office in Manhattan where I am finally getting the respect that my keen intellect and rhetorical adroitness command. It became painfully clear to me that my estimable skills as an analyst were the proverbial pearls cast before the swine that are the sports fans who huddle daily before their idiot boxes to find out which juiced-up jock managed to knock a leather-encased sphere of twine over a fence and into the grasping hands of a teeming mob of howling, drunken nitwits whose lives are so bereft of meaning that the mere act of finding oneself in the path of a ball is deemed sufficient cause to hop around and shout with glee like a toddler upon discovering the wonders of the backyard kiddy pool.

The people who read the tripe you and your ilk put out are responsible for the demise of a once-great nation, filled with hope and promise. You, sir, have poisoned the collective mind of this nation with the vile, putrid, hate-filled bilge that emanates from your so-called “think” tanks. You, sir, have lowered the standards of the intellectual life of our people to such an extent that the barest glimmer of independent thought is subjected to the moronic hoots of the Jerry Springer audience you call a party. The slightest expression of dissent is howled down as though it were a solar eclipse taking place over a time-forsaken land of Cro-Magnons. You, sir, represent a toxin to this nation’s – nay, this world’s – mind, body and soul. And, it is my task – my mission – to eradicate the planet of the scourge of your slithering, reptilian horde of mental vipers just as St. Patrick did the Emerald Isle.

For all the mouth-breathing fatuousness of the sports world, it represents a mere dram in comparison to the vast reservoir of venom that you and your kind are pumping into the veins of all that is good about the world. And, so, I have my priorities. And, when I succeed in making the world aware of the pestilence that you represent, those priorities will take hold and we will all be gloriously free of your presence, once and for all.