Missing Keith Olbermann and his creative (never only bombastic lite) disdain for the myriad sins and gaffes of the GOP, it is a pleasure to anticipate the return of the self-invented scold on Al Gore's Current TV channel. The economy has bottomed -- though it is also sitting on the bottom -- so it is time for Mr. Olbermann to tell us what is wrong with the party out of power. His jeremiads are always a treat. The news content on his show at MSNBC was usually comfortably slight and digestible in glances; however the outrage for celebrity politicians of the right, and the strangely dreamy veneration for celebrity politicians of the left, was always comforting to watch, like a black and white screwball comedy movie with lots of moving parts that don't fit and yet reliably delivers a happy ending: I'm thinking of Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in (1938) "Bringing Up Baby."
I find it puzzling that JB has palpable disdain for the rightist demagogues (Beck, Limbaugh) but an outspoken, albeit tongue-in-cheek, affection for Olbermann. Isn't Olbermann at least as obnoxious as Limbaugh, but with none of the saving graces (i.e., being correct?)
Well, at least it's not another thread on McCotter. Be thankful for small favors. There's lots more going on out there than either M or KO or W (what else alphabetical can we do?), but M & KO & W are what we get.
Am corrected. Resolution to find the fun in foxy burlesque colleagues. Good reminder. Why am I listening so hard? Error of my way is to favor an outcome. Better to sample the opera. Endeavor to enjoy the tone. J
Cranky old liberal in a toupee'
It was once said that there were mistakes in the New York Times because they wanted to have something for everyone in every paper.
We have many hundreds of channels available now for every conceivable taste. This allows me to continue my mission to be pro-choice on all matters: I am pro-choice on abortion (as a matter of states rights, you can choose to live an pro-life state or a pro-infanticide state, until such time as the Supremes determine that the right to life in the constitution includes unborn babies, who embody pure innocence); pro-choice on firearms ownership (hey, if you're stupid enough to take good intentions to a gun fight, it's your life, but I'm taking the best firepower I've got); and now on TV viewership (you watch Olberman, I'll watch/listen to Rush/Liddy/Imus/Ingraham/Savage/a few more, the advertisers know who brings customers with money).
Yes, Rodney, We Can All Get Along!
Heard on the KO segment last night that "We've missed him (KO)". Point of information: Don't include LF in that particular "we". It's true that I used to watch his rants to get another point of view, especially during the ObamaCare debate. But I can honestly say that not once, not once during the period he's been off the air, have I said, Jeez, I sure miss listening to Keith Olbermann.
Re: Mary Anastasia O'Grady piece - well, we've only been exiling the Castros for 50 years now. Let's give it a little more time, maybe the poor people of the island will finally starve and the Castros will get the message.
The U.S. policy to Cuba over the last 50 years is the SINGLE, most STUPID piece of foreign policy I've ever heard of, from any country, in the world, throughout all of recorded history.
"a matter of states rights, you can choose to live an pro-life state or a pro-infanticide state"
Say, MD, is there no one to explain that to the dim, mostly white, bulbs, bulbs who live in DCand demand the right to have a representative, not to mention an expensive Senator, they can move to Va. or Md.? It's not that difficult a concept to grasp.
"The U.S. policy to Cuba over the last 50 years is the SINGLE, most STUPID piece of foreign policy I've ever heard of"
You missed, perhaps, giving $2 BN to Brazil to drill for oil off its coast while doing everything in our power to interdict drilling in OUR Gulf and off OUR shores?
"It's true that I used to watch his rants to get another point of view, especially during the ObamaCare debate."
What? You couldn't suss the brain-dead liberal ranter view point without ol' Keith? I could write it myself without ever having heard it.
Corlyss
Margaret Sanger was a racist and eugenicist... she founded Planned Parenthood to help blacks and other minorities abort as many of their children as possible in order to advance the cause of the white race. There was a recent news item which indicated to me that her efforts have been largely successful (the item indicated that a huge number of the aborted children were minority) but for one thing she overlooked... edumacated whites aren't aborting, because they aren't procreating. So the status quo remains. I can only conclude, in answer to your question, that the Liberal Democrat white bulbs smart enough to understand what I've said have been aborted.
As I said, the Supremes need to toss Roe, protect life, and end this genocide.
I never heard that about Sanger. I thought her target was the poor, esp. immigrants, but regardless of race. I guess this is the study you refer to? http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/US-Abortion-Patients.pdf
But it puts me in mind of the oft-cited fact that the earliest targets of gun control laws were minorities too. Don't want them upstarts to defend themselves against the nightriders. Pathetic. The right of self-defense is struggling today as well, more or less regardless of race or ethnicity. But it has really popped into the fore since minority gangs of tax-users in Europe have started molesting the tax-paying populace. There's something truly f'd up about the logic there.
The public policy's hidden sociology, eh?
JB:
At first, I was quite ticked off that you appeared to be celebrating the "return" of Keith Olbermann, that idiot in search of a village who has now found one with Al Gore's Current TV channel. Thankfully, I then calmed down enough to realize just how damningly faint was your apparent praise of the former MSNBC "scold." So, duh, I now get it -- it's all a joke!
OK, I'll play, too. Having Olbermann join up with Al Gore's channel is actually a positive development. Like any wise general who wants all his enemies to his front, we would do well to gather as many hard-left wingnuts as possible into one easily watched -- or in this case, totally un-watched -- asylum. Even better, Drudge reports that Olbermann is extending an invitation to Anthony Weiner to join him at Al Gore's internet loonybin whereupon, one supposes, they can all bay at the moon together.
Maybe Current TV should take a cue from CNN where that other widely respected moral philosopher, Elliott Spitzer, has a talk show that according to Keith "is doing OK" at 8 PM (tremble, O'Reilly, tremble!). Leaving aside the likelihood that Olbermann defines "doing OK" in MSNBC's modest terms of mobs of ones, let's suppose that GoreVision takes on both Olbermann and Weiner, perhaps as co-hosting a talk show. What would we even entitle such a misbegotten media basilisk? How about Dopey and Anthony? Oops, possible copyright infringement there. So let's try OlberWeiner -- nah, sounds like a German dog breed. The WeinerMann Report? Won't work, either -- didn't George Carlin, God rest him, do that routine years ago on the old Flip Wilson Show?
So, kudos to you, JB. You have recognized that the "return" of Keith Olbermann is a natural path to comedy wherein the jokes write themselves, especially if Anthony Weiner, having run away, now joins the Al Gore circus.
Pity that algore got so rich. But it is good news that he will waste it on his TV venture. algore paying tons of money for a PR cancer is a two-fer. Besides mutilating "science," clueless gore ignores what the MSM already knows -- KO is an erratic, toxic ball of hate who, on balance, offends more Indys and center right Dems than he converts to his team. For the same reason that gaffe/outrage machines DebbieWS, Pelosi, Maher, Matthews, Maddow, Schultz are better off (for conservatives) with their megaphones, daily KO clips on YouTube will help make BHO a one termer.
Related point, ever notice how classical liberals defend the First Amendment rights and public soap boxes of even their enemies while the Demonic mobs of the Rousseau Lefties try to silence and punish dissenters (AGW "deniers," Rush, Palin, etc.)? No difference between the parties? Nonsense.
There was a little old German lady who was the payroll clerk at a company I used to work at. Irascible is the word that comes to mind, and "progressive" as can be politically. All I would have to do is go up beside her and say "Psst.. 'libertarian'" ... and she'd go apeshit.
So anyway, my story is that one time we started arguing about pro-life vs. pro-choice and she got more and more vehement and angry defending abortion rights and finally she said (I kid you not) : "What are you going to do with all those little black babies you'd have around if we didn't have legal abortion?"
The absurdity of the political positions hit me at that moment. Here I am the conservative, white, male, supposedly racist, yet I'm the one saying "Well, I don't mind having little black babies around, the more the merrier" (and meaning it) and here's this progressive basically admitting that Naziism is alive and well in the modern day Democratic Party.
You missed, perhaps, giving $2 BN to Brazil to drill for oil off its coast while doing everything in our power to interdict drilling in OUR Gulf and off OUR shores?
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Great. Let me know when they've done that same thing 50 years in a row and I'll say you have a point.
I have two black friends from high school (brothers), one quite liberal, the other more or less moderate/conservative, whom I asked one time about the "abortion= black genocide" theory. I expected them to get really p/o'd. Instead, they thought it was a non-issue. The liberal one said, basically, "Yeah, what WOULD you want all those black babies around for?"
LOL - et tu, Brute.
Much too subtle to damn Keith Olbermann with faint praise.
Here's more how I'd go about it (but this is just me):
"Keith Olbermann is an ugly, dorky-looking nimrod, who hasn't had an original thought his entire life, is dumber than a bagful of hammers, and who should be taken out and shot without the benefit of a blindfold."
There. If you're paying close attention the difference in approach should not require further elucidation.
You're going soft, Uncle Lou, and on Keith Olbermann of all people. I mean, why do you feel the need for the unnecessary qualifier "original" when linking the inherently contradictory words "thought" and "Olbermann?" Would you do the same for "square" and "circle?" I don't think so. For shame!
Not so: even parrots are able to repeat thoughts, although I don't ever recall seeing a parrot anywhere near as stupid-looking as Keith Olbermann. If there is it should be euthanized immediately.
"The absurdity of the political positions hit me at that moment. Here I am the conservative, white, male, supposedly racist, yet I'm the one saying "Well, I don't mind having little black babies around, the more the merrier" (and meaning it) and here's this progressive basically admitting that Naziism is alive and well in the modern day Democratic Party."
The Dems/Libs/Progressives love to yammer on about the paranoid strain in American politics, something that wasn't discovered until Richard Hoffsteder began to fear ending up on a 50s blacklist for his Communist activities. But the absurdist strain in liberal politics is far more enduring IMO. Your stropy antiquarian friend seems to have forgotten that lots of black babies is how the Damacrats secure the inner city welfare-dependent votes. I memory serves, Marion Barry was never shy about the fact. A black friend and one of the best bosses I ever had told me that her grandmother in Texas was a die-hard Republican, because she remembered when the Republicans were the only party talking about civil rights for blacks. IMO the modern inner city welfare voters are plantationed, so to speak, as voters in perpetuity for the Damacrats. The Dams had to figure out some way of replacing Dixiecrats' votes. But none of them will admit that. No, they're policies are all about compassion, just like SS, Medicare, and Medicaid. There's a political concept buried deep in that constellation of "coincidental" facts.
Well, I think it's certainly safe ground to say that Democratic politicians thrive off of human suffering. In a country this size, there's always somebody suffering from something who can be used as a poster child.
"Stropy"? I just googled it and the only match I found was it's the Polish word for "ceiling".
Corlyss?
Where'd that other p go? It means cross or hostile.
Stroppy - Easily angered, belligerent ... chiefly British. Perhaps a corruption of "obstreperous".
Got it, thanks. As fortune would have it, there is an individual in my life who has fit this description perfectly as of late, so maybe I'll have a chance to use it.
By the way, although "stroppy antiquarian" is cute, the technically correct term for a woman over 50 who argues at the drop of a hat, is critical, and constantly finds fault and scowls at everything, is "battle-axe". My Mom is a textbook battle-axe (they're actually quite rare - most battle-axe sightings turn out to be old crows having a bad day) and I've made a careful study of their behaviour.
The payroll clerk in question was an old hag, by the way. On her stroppy days, she could exhibit behaviour approaching that of a seasoned battle-axe, but she just couldn't sustain it for 72 holes.