Olbermann Demands Answers! Olby put his finger on the big unanswered question regarding Katrina, and that is what consumed both KO and crony David Shuster during the opening minutes of the Friday Hour of Spin. The controversy: how is it that they had lights on when President Bush spoke on Thursday? And, even more important, why did they turn the lights off after he left? Shuster raised another burning issue: the ground was clean where Bush spoke, but a few blocks away it is still dirty and smelly.

What's going on here? Why didn't the President speak in the dark? How come he wasn't standing in feces and rotting animal corpses? Who is responsible for this? Unfortunately, neither Olby nor his crony had any answers, but it was, after all, their journalistic duty to ask the tough questions.

Later, Keith dealt with the President's speech. KO described Bush's "borderline phobia" about apologizing, and once again raised the issue of the lighting. (This has obviously replaced "duct tape" as the talking point du jour.) Then, citing a Heritage Foundation article, Keith proclaimed that the President's plan bears the hallmarks of "Bush-style neoconservatism". Say what? Does KO even know what neoconservatism is? And then to put a fine point on it, he didn't just report on an ad from moveon.org, he actually ran the entire thing, gratis.

To chew over the speech itself, Olby called in Old Faithful: Craig Crawford. And joining him was the only kind of conservative Keith likes to feature, the kind who dislikes George W Bush, opposed the Iraq War, and favors protectionism. Yes, Patrick J Buchanan. The latter was lukewarm at best: "not a great speech...adequate...he's doing his best...he was the individual who didn't see it coming". Craig Crawford was his usual sycophantic self, droning about how Bush's track record is "not very good", and endearing himself to KO by bringing up...the lights! Olby himself smarmed that it "sure sounded like tax and spend liberals to me". When Mr Buchanan started to express some criticism of Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional Democrats, KO declared they were out of time and ended the segment.

The only other report of note: more of Keith's "worst people". One of them was the US Department of Justice, because they were looking into environmental lawsuits that prevented the US Army Corps of Engineers from improving the levees. On OlbyPlanet, it's OK to point fingers, but if it happens to be at enviros, then he doesn't want to hear about it.

Was tonight's "worst person" finally at long last a Democrat, or a liberal? No, it was yet another manifestation of the Mother of All Olbsessions. The "Big Giant Head", i.e. Bill O'Reilly, for making a tongue-in-cheek comment on his radio show that he wished the hurricane had just hit the UN building. Olby chortled about how stupid O'Reilly is, and that he just gets "dumber", because flooding the UN building would mean that Fox News, a few blocks away, would also get flooded. O'Reilly actual words:

Bush to address the UN, says we must be steadfast in battling terrorism. I'm sure all the UN people fell asleep. They don't really care about anything over there at all. I just wish Katrina had only hit the United Nations building, nothing else, just had flooded them out.

Apparently Keith didn't notice that Mr Bill was speaking facetiously, and said he wished it had only hit the UN building, and nothing else. Does Olby not understand the meaning of "only" and "nothing else"? It's not something that should be way over his head, like "neoconservative". Since we know KO doesn't spend his hours listening to The Radio Factor, we'd suggest that the next time he lifts an item from a George Soros website (which should be, oh, about Monday) he should read it more carefully.