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For the second straight night on Tuesday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann devoted more than a fourth of his 8pm EST Countdown show to indulging his fantasies about how a few supposed voting glitches, none of which would alter the results, justify contesting the presidential vote outcome. He complained about "the deafening silence from the mainstream media on this story" and denounced his journalistic colleagues as "wimps" for not joining his cause. Olbermann trumpeted how he received 7,500 e-mails about his Monday show with "the ratio of positive to negative holding at about 22 to 1," a sign his program is...

NEW YORK— Here’s an interesting little sidebar of our system of government confirmed recently by the crack Countdown research staff: no Presidential candidate’s concession speech is legally binding. The only determinants of the outcome of election are the reports of the state returns boards and the vote of the Electoral College. That’s right. Richard Nixon may have phoned John Kennedy in November, 1960, and congratulated him through clenched teeth. But if the FBI had burst into Kennedy headquarters in Chicago a week later and walked out with all the file cabinets and a bunch of employees with their raincoats drawn...

For a debate that many predicted would be de-fanged by 32 pages of rules, last night was pretty sharp. One thing that happened (to indulge in a degree of analysis) -- the President was baited, and he took that bait. Kerry's repeated charges against Bush shifted the dynamic. It was Bush on the defensive about his war record, not Kerry on the defensive about his senate record. Bush looked baited -- often appearing uncomfortable, angry, his body hunched too many times. Those cutaways -- the shots of the President while Kerry was speaking -- were cutting. By the halfway mark,...

He droned on and on...his identity has been uncovered...heavy ties to the Republicans...the Clinton thing, etc. He even brought Ken Starr into it.Olberman had that Gotcha swarmy look on his face, like the cat that swallowed the canary. Ugh!

Did anybody just hear Keith Olberman talking about Buckhead??? I wasn't paying that much attention, but I could have sworn I heard him say that "Buckhead" was an attorney who had just been to a meeting with the Bush-Cheney group before the memos were shown on CBS!

In the midst of kvetching Tuesday night over Vice President Dick Cheney's remark about the danger of electing Kerry/Edwards, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann outed himself as someone "who didn't vote for Mr. Cheney." Before accusing Cheney of "terrorizing people," Olbermann insisted that he "tries not to knee jerk everything based on left and right." He needs to try harder. On Countdown, Olbermann played this clip from Cheney at a town meeting in Iowa: "If we make the wrong choice, and the danger is, that we'll get hit again. That we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the...

Keith Olbermann, the host of Countdown on MSNBC, sent an email after apparently reading the commentary piece "Two Mules for Sister Liberal." I am pasting the email below for you to read. He attacked my writing ability. I doubt he actually wrote the email because he is a former sports reporter. The e-mail appears legitimate as it comes from MSNBC. You decide.

An an e-mail to TVNewser, MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann has a message for Michelle Malkin: "I'd say to her exactly what a veteran sage reporter once said to me after I made a terrifically bad rookie mistake on a newscast in Los Angeles: 'I'm very proud of you, you have great courage. If I'd just done that on television, I'd go home and open my veins.'" He'll be Hardblogging about it again today...

"bombastic ass" is not the antidote to "boorish ass" (or why Keith Olbermann Cannot Do Cleanup for Chris Matthews)   by Mia T, 8.20.04   perating under the false assumption, (a curious, 20th-century cable conceit), that "bombastic ass" is the antidote to "boorish ass," MSNBC schedulers have Keith Olbermann doing cleanup for Chris Matthews. Last night, Michelle Malkin easily dispensed with that silly notion. (See below.)   SOME POINTS TO PONDER, SWIFTLY Is Matthews a witless waterboy D who doesn't understand that 'self-inflicted' doesn't imply 'intentional'... or is he a colluding waterboy D who does? (A distinction without a...

Michelle Malkin, the unfortunate and overmatched author of a self-loathing book that attempts to justify our World War II internment and robbery of Americans of Japanese heritage, became the harbinger of the next mucky smell of low tide. She raised the story— heretofore consigned largely to Robert Novak and everybody to his right— in that delightful, Teflon way of modern politics: ‘I’m not saying that John Kerry shot himself. But in the Swift Boat Veterans’ book, they ask whether or not his wounds were self-inflicted.’ If Ms. Malkin isn’t seen on television, or moving on her own power, in the...

On a day when both the New York Times and NBC News reported fresh intelligence about active al-Qaeda moves inside the U.S., MSNBC's Keith Olbermann lashed out at an editorial "in a thing called the Investor's Business Daily," which had picked up on a CyberAlert quotation of Olbermann, to denounce it for supposedly doubting his patriotism when he questioned if politics were behind Sunday's terror warning: "I got ripped. Anybody who said anything other than, 'Yes, sir, Homeland Security, thank you for the information, we'll do what you say,' was viewed as unpatriotic and inspiring lack of confidence and aiding...

Terrorism: Your government tells you it has solid intelligence of an impending attack. Quick — what do you do? Of course, you scoff. Or suggest it's merely political.That's the sorry state of America's political discourse today: that a serious, credible warning of a possible terror attack leads not to calls for action, but to cries of political mischief and worse.Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge warned Sunday of an increased threat of terrorist attacks on financial "icons" — like the World Bank, IMF and New York Stock Exchange — in three cities.He cited compelling evidence from recent raids in Pakistan, including...

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann devoted an entire segment Monday night on his 8pm EDT Countdown show to speculation that Bush re-election politics were really behind Sunday’s threat warning. Olbermann argued: “History tells us Presidents have exaggerated threats to the public safety to gain political advantage or simplify complex needs of strategy. Ask Lyndon Johnson. Ask William McKinley. Do we need to ask George W. Bush?" Olbermann soon threw in Joe McCarthy in the pantheon President Bush is supposedly following, “from Joe McCarthy to Lyndon Johnson's manipulation of the Gulf of Tonkin, our politics have been filled with politicians who have created...

The quiet and orderly transfer of authority in Iraq from U.S. Administrator Paul Bremer to Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi reminded MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann of...the U.S. pulling out of Vietnam in panic with helicopters taking off packed with fleeing people. On his program Countdown, Olbermann suggested to Washington Post reporter Robin Wright that “the behind-the-doors kind of thing and the immediate exit of Ambassador Bremer today, might look a little like the helicopters taking off out of Vietnam in 1975.” Wright rejected the comparison. Olbermann proposed to Wright, as taken down by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth: "If Secretary Rumsfeld could...

This week on the syndicated Jeopardy quiz show: media figures, including Tim Russert, Tucker Carlson, Bob Woodward, Aaron Brown and Keith Olbermann. Plus, Peggy Noonan and Al Franken. Monday's Washington Post provided a day-by-day listing of the line-up for the shows hosted by Alex Trebek, which were taped, on a Saturday in early April, at the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. "Winners," the Post noted, "get $50,000 for a charity of their choice; losers get $20,000, regardless of how poorly they play." The lineup: - Monday: Tucker Carlson of CNN's Crossfire, Peggy Noonan, the former...

John Dean appeared Monday on CBS’s Early Show and MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, following a cozy segment Friday night on PBS’s Now with Bill Moyers, to tout his new book, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush. CBS’s Harry Smith at least challenged him a bit, but not Olbermann who seemed enthralled with Dean’s polemic. Olbermann trumpeted how Dean “has produced a book with perspective. And that perspective is simply terrifying. The bottom line: George Bush has done more damage to this nation than his old boss, Richard Nixon, ever dreamt of.” Olbermann saw ominous signs...

Veteran television host and producer Merv Griffin, a long-time friend of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, appeared Tuesday night on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and used the opportunity to blast CBS for "the most cowardly thing I've ever heard" over the reported tone and content of CBS's upcoming mini- series, The Reagans. "It's a cowardly act," he charged, asking: "Is that what the 'C' stands for in CBS?" Griffin, the owner of the Beverly Hilton who created the Wheel of Fortune game show after many years as host of his own daytime Merv Griffin Show, relayed how Nancy Reagan feels...

<p>Perhaps the high point of cable-news channel MSNBC's war coverage came when a newspaper photo depicted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld working in front of a television tuned to the network. For an outlet whose small audience until recently seemed to comprise mainly the joke writers at "Saturday Night Live," who relished poking fun at the troubled channel, it was something of a validation.</p>

MSNBC's replacement, starting today, for Phil Donahue: A man who, in a previous stint with MSNBC, opined that "the person Ken Starr has reminded me of facially all this time was Heinrich Himmler" and wondered that if Starr continued to pursue President Clinton, "would not there be some sort of comparison to a persecutor as opposed to a prosecutor for Mr. Starr?" That man is Keith Olbermann, a frequent occupier of the 5pm EST slot in recent weeks filling in for Jerry Nachman. Tonight, he will debut as host of his own show, in the 8pm EST hour until recently...