Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for January 17

Host: Keith Olbermann

Read the transcript to the 8 p.m. ET show
Updated: Jan 18, 7:06 p.m.
Guests: Col Jack Jacobs, Michael Musto

OLBYWATCH GUIDE: Right off the bat Olby runs with Seymour Hersh's latest collection of unnamed sources and confidential informants. It appears that we're snooping around in Iran. Good old Sy; he can still churn them out. Col Jack Jacobs gave Olby a wake-up call:

If we're not doing it, we should be....It is not news.

Of course not; that's why it's KO's lead story!

Item: The President's approval rating is up 4%. Immediately countered with:
Item: 53% doubt Iraq will have a stable government.
Item: Sen Kennedy disapproves of the Iraq policy. [This is also not news.]
After an excerpt from a David Gregory interview with the President, Keith found a soundbite from John Kerry about how terrible the voting process is, then added:

Sen Kerry also announced tonight that the Red Sox apparently won the World Series.

Somehow KO didn't bring up either Bernard Kerik or Armstrong Williams. What is he up to?

#4 on the Countdown: Newly-released tapes of JFK at the ADA discussing civil rights. KO took a shot at a local Mississippi Tax Commission Office that took the day as a joint celebration of two birthdays: MLK and Robert E Lee. "Obviously there's a racial component," ruled Judge Olbermann. We wonder why the obvious connections to Bernard Kerik and Armstrong Williams weren't mentioned.

#3: Iraq elections, violence over there, will there be violence over here? Mostly recycled NBC News reports, including one on the security prep for Thursday's inauguration. An ideal time to bring up VoteFraud2004inOhioButNotPennsylvania! But, nothing. Does this mean KO is done counting the ballots? Does he finally have...closure? Didn't Armstrong Williams visit Ohio once? Why is Keith avoiding this story? His corporate masters must have clamped down on him.

#2: A gut-wrenching adoption battle over a three-year-old child. This sounds more like Inside Edition or the Today show. Oh wait, it is the Today show, as Olby runs their interview with the adoptive parents who lost their child. Bernard Kerik figures into this somehow; why doesn't Keith realize that?

Olby's subject matter lurches into the tsunami telethon. Even though last week Olby was complaining that the telethon was just giving "free publicity" to O'Reilly, Keith decided to give Mr Bill even more gratis PR:

We can measure just how much broadcasting largest ego was inflated by it.

KO then goes on to repeat a quote from Mr Bill, once again lifted (without attribution) from a blog.

And the #1 story? The Golden Globe Awards. Which just happens to be broadcast by...NBC. The corporate masters at work again.