It must have been divine intervention. Just as Keith began the Hour of Spin, out went the power. It's hard not to believe in miracles when that happens. It came back in short order, but the first few minutes of propaganda were lost. When we came in, Olby was chatting it up with Howard Fineman, Pundit for All Occasions. It was the CIA leak case again, with a special emphasis on the speculation (KO's stock in trade) about Cheney.

Then, marking another increment in Olby's progression from lifting items from left-wing blogs to having the left-wing bloggers as guests, up popped Arianna Huffington. They picked over Judith Miller's "credibility" (which is under question because she is "too close to her sources"). Having to put up with that grating Zsa-Zsa Gabor accent caused us to think: if only that power outage had lasted a few minutes more. Naturally, Keith found a way to bring up Cheney again, because it would be a lost opportunity not to draw upon Huffington's awesome expertise on the intricacies of federal law. Rumor is that tomorrow Olby will bring on Yahoo Serious to analyze the epidemiological implications of avian flu.

A taped NBC report on the Miers nomination; more taped segments on rumored instances of euthanasia during Katrina and "donor fatigue". Then Olbermann had to correct something he apparently said during The Big Blackout, crediting a quote to Lyndon Johnson that LBJ never said. He was considerably kinder on himself than he was to Michael Chertoff when the latter referred to Louisiana as a city. Back then, Olby took such slips much more seriously:

Well, there's your problem right there. If ever a slip of the tongue defined a government's response to a crisis.... We now have Mr. Chertoff's indelible announcement that Louisiana is a city.

Indeed. If ever a slip of the tongue defined a sports-guy-playing-newscaster's ignorance and total lack of qualifications. We now have Mr Olbermann's indelible announcement that LBJ said something he never said. Live by the snark, die by the snark.