"COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN" (8:00 P.M.-9:00 P.M. ET)

Host: Keith Olbermann

Topics/Guests:

• NEW BIN LADEN TAPE: Roger Cressey, NBC terrorism analyst
• EXPOSING THE FINANCIAL RECORDS: Richard Wolffe, Newsweek
• STAR JONES INTERVIEW: recycled from the Today show

"You Don't Say"

In his opening spiel, the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann found a way to use the phrase "bank-tapping" three times, making him three times wronger than usual (there was no bank involved). But this edition of The Hour of Spin was as notable for what Krazy Keith didn't say, as for what he did.

KO, looking more orange than, well, an orange, first talked about the new Usama tape. He also dealt with the "latest alleged atrocity" by US troops. Note the use of "latest". Clinton apologist Roger Cressey made a return visit. Hey, it's been all of 48 hours since the last time he was on Countdown! Usama's tape had words of praise for Zarqawi. Keith, never one to let go of a pet fringe theory (Al Qaeda wanted to get rid of Zarqawi), spun the apparent contradiction by claiming the tape was being used as "the official martyrdom of Zarqawi".

Then it was back to "bank-tapping", since Cressey has teamed up with his old boss, Richard Clarke, to pooh-pooh the revelation of the program. Keith & Cress regurgitated the "old news" argument again, but we wondering about what wasn't said. Namely, if everyone knew about it, how did the program keep capturing terrorists?

Then it was time for "attack the media", something KO does almost every night, but bellows in outrage when anyone he doesn't approve of does it. This time we had both at once: Keith attacks the Wall Street Journal, because they criticized the New York Times. On OlbyPlanet, Keith attack = good, WSJ attack = bad. Wolffie, for the second time this week, was there to echo Keith's spin. And talking about spin, KO came up with a great one to cover another of his own embarrassments.

When the SWIFT story broke, Krazy Keith was all over it like white on rice. And he did everything in his power to wish it true. A few days later, two of the phone companies said the story was wrong. Olbermann was on his high horse. He said by denying the story BellSouth was engaging in an "attack the media" diversion. They had demanded a retraction from USA Today, and KO ridiculed that as a "risky strategy", suggested they were "bluffing", and generally pooh-poohed their case by snarking, "I didn't see the word 'libel' in there."

Well, the USA Today did indeed retract precisely the things BellSouth and Verizon had insisted were not true. As the paper reported

five members of the congressional intelligence committees said they had been told in secret briefings that BellSouth did not turn over call records to the NSA, three lawmakers said they had been told that Verizon had not participated in the NSA database, and four said that Verizon's subsidiary MCI did turn over records to the NSA.

[Note: the above information that USA Today got from Congress is more of the stuff Keith didn't say.] So comedian Keith Olbermann went into damage control mode.:

Are other news organizations, do you think, running scared now? The editions today of USA Today, uh, they, they said they could no longer confirm the report they had...Has there been a chilling effect?

Here is OlbySpin at its finest. Twisted, yet elegant. Nonsensical, yet somehow convincing to the credulous Olbypologists. The paper got the story wrong, and put up a retraction. (Isn't that something KO was himself hectoring O'Reilly about the other day? Oh wait, we're getting ahead of ourselves.) But on OlbyPlanet, where Keith can never admit his spin doesn't stink, never mind what those intelligence committees said, the newspaper is "running scared". Classic.

#4: The Japanese Prime Minister visits Graceland (recycled NBC report). Oddball. Star Jones: huge chunks of an interview from the Today show taking up the #3 slot of Countdown. But ratings don't matter, right Keith? Who cares about those 50 billion flies anyhow? Oh, and don't forget, we've got Star Jones reruns!

#2: Tour de France, the space shuttle (recycled NBC report), Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, David Hasselhoff. The #1 segment was reserved for another fine, fine edition of "the oddball plays of the month".

In the "apolitical" Media Matters Minute, conservative "harpy" Melanie Morgan was a runner-up. Gee, wasn't Olby ranting about how bad Ann Coulter was for calling someone a "harpy"? The "worst persons" were those "nitwits" Fox's E.D. Hill and Brian Kilmeade for suggesting an "office of censorship" modeled after the one FDR instituted, staffed by respected journalists who would give advisory opinions to media outlets as to whether publication of a story would hurt national security. Needless to say, everything in the previous sentence after the word "censorship" is more stuff that Keith didn't say.

But the biggest thing Krazy Keith didn't say relates to his continuing jihad against Bill O'Reilly. You'll recall how outraged he was that Mr Bill reported a quote from John Murtha, and the newspaper had later corrected the quote, but not Bill. It was great fodder for an entire program segment. But what about the fact that O'Reilly did in fact correct the story and apologize? Not one word from infamous, deplorable, who will never allow anything to pass his lips that contradicts his anti-Bill screeds.

By the way, when O'Reilly apologized, he apologized. He didn't complain that the newspaper was "running scared". He didn't fret that correcting a false story would have a "chilling effect". Keith relied on an inaccurate newspaper story just as Bill did. When the paper admitted they got it wrong, Keith spun furiously, impugned the newspaper, and tried to twist his way out of the situation by casting blame everywhere except at his own feet. Bill O'Reilly apologized. Like a man. And Kourageous Keith was afraid to say he did.

And that's The Hour of Spin for this, the 133rd day of the Keith Olbermann CoverUp. And the magic number is still two

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"COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN" (8:00 P.M.-9:00 P.M. ET)

Host: Keith Olbermann

Topics/Guests:

• SUPREME COURT RULES THE PRESIDENT HAS OVERSTEPPED HIS AUTHORITY IN CALLING FOR MILITARY TRIBUNALS FOR GITMO DETAINEES: Dana Milbank, Washington Post
• OKLAHOMA CITY'S AUTOMATIC GUN WEEKEND: Galen Culver, KFOR-TV reporter
• PREGNANT BRITNEY SPEARS POSES NUDE ON THE COVER OF HARPER'S BIZARRE: Michael Musto, Village Voice

It took the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann all of sixty seconds to bring up Richard Nixon. This must have been George Orwell's night off. Now if you had a major, complex constitutional decision to analyze and explain, whom would you ask to do the honors? One would think an impartial constitutional scholar (no, not Turley!) might be the best choice. At the very least you want someone who as a practicing attorney. But not KO. His legal "expert" is a disbarred lawyer!

Felon John Dean mumbled his way through all the talking points: Geneva Conventions, Gitmo, due process, etc. His "analysis" was singularly unenlightening which, for the ex-con, is an improvement: better the viewers of Countdown be uninformed than misinformed.

Then we got yet another of Countdown's "top newsmakers": Dana Milbank. Deprived of garish garments, he gently contradicted Olby's assertion that the President was "stunned" by the decision (as just about everyone except KO realizes, the outcome was easily predicted). Another lame trick regurgitated by Keith (no matter what happens, it's bad for Bush) in discussing Congress working to create law that would pass Supreme Court muster:

Is that potentially as much of a blow to the President as his, er, perception of, of his role and what he's supposed to be doing in this country as the actual ruling relating to Gitmo, is just the process that we talked about as, as dangerous to him?

Dana gave an approved answer this time, insuring his reapparance on The Hour of Spin. Through both interviews neither Krazy Keith nor his guests ever addressed, or seemed the least bit interested in, how this decision could impact prosecuting the war on terror. But that's nowhere near as important as finding every possible anti-Bush nook and cranny.

We know how Olby loves to bring up polls--he did so Tuesday and Wednesday, when he could use them to support his spin. Tonight he referred to the New York Times controversy. But for some reason this poll, one of the first to query public opinion on the SWIFT operation, didn't get reported by Olby. (70% support the program, 60% think the Times helped terrorists more than the public.) Needless to say, Keith wasn't very eager to report the President's approval numbers either, since they are up over 40%. Possibly they'll dip again and the poll reports will resume.

Next: floods, oddball, and a rerun of video (recycled from a local station) from just two days ago about Wyandotte, OK. Sprinkled through all of this were incessant references to "comedian Rush Limbaugh" and Viagra. All we could think about was what kind of pills KO uses when he's sending secret messages to his latest email squeeze-of-the-week. Then more recycled reportage about small, "smart" cars.

In the celebrity segment, Krazy finally got around to "comedian Rush Limbaugh". (Geez, if it was ever funny, do you really believe it's funny the 369th time you say it?) Rush was at a seminar about the tv show "24", and The Laughing Stagehand found all of it most uproarious. Then Pamela Anderson, Brittney Spears, Star Jones, Barbara Walters, and the disturbing Michael Musto. In the Media Matters Minute, that well-known "apolitical" segment, conservative Melanie Morgan was "worst".

And that's The Hour of Spin for this, the 132nd day of the Keith Olbermann CoverUp. And the magic number is still two

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The only connection to Olbermann in this post is that the editor of OlbermannWatch also wrote this Op-Ed for The Washington Examiner.

You can find a direct link here: Robert Cox: Americans deserve better than Keller's open letter

In the piece, I acknowledge the general point made by Times Editor Bill Keller that our country is founded on the principle of a free and aggressive press not taking the president's word at face value but go on to note that nowhere in his "open letter" does Keller provide a specific reason why it was in the "public interest" to disclose the covert SWIFT financial transaction monitoring program. Keller's attitude his typical of "elites" of all stripes who take it upon themselves to decided what's best for the rest of us.

The story has been widely linked. If you check the Examiner national page (they also own the San Francisco Examiner) you will see that my Op-Ed is currently the Most Read article on the site.

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We've been FARK'ed:

Right-wingers ponder the possibility that Keith Olbermann conspired with Topps and WalMart to inflate the value of Alex Gordon rookie cards. No word on if the Illuminati and the Queen of England were involved in this conspiracy

FARK linked Who is Merkle923?

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Keith Olbermann cannot be happy about a new blog that popped up over the past few days. For This Relief Much Thanks may just turn out to be KO's worst nightmare. It may well put his ongoing "falafel" jokes in an entirely new context.

The action on this blog is all in the comments section. Let me know what you think.

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"COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN" (8:00 P.M.-9:00 P.M. ET)

Host: Keith Olbermann

Topics/Guests:

• CAPITOL HILL PLANS AN INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION INTO THE DAMAGE DONE BY THE NEW YORK TIMES LEAK: Roger Cressey, NBC terrorism analyst
• STAR JONES SURPRISE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT SHE IS LEAVING "THE VIEW," BARABARA WALTERS RESPONDS: Katrina Szish, US weekly

"Two Tickets to OlbyPlanet"

The infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann was so eager to ridicule the notion that exposing the SWIFT program caused any harm, that he abandoned even a semblance of a pretext of logical thought. Any terrorist with an internet connection knew about it, and so on. Roger Cressey obediently parrotted Keith's mantra, saying this was "no state secret", only allowing that revealing it was "counter-productive". Olby went on:

Wouldn't a sophisticated, cunning, evil, internet-using terrorist group know that these tactics were going to be used?

Well, Krazy, how do you explain that we caught the Bali bomber through this project? And continued to intercept terrorist plans as recently as just last year? What, those don't count? We shouldn't bother catching the Bali bomber because he wasn't "cunning" enough to read Swift's magazine? This is OlbyLogic to the ultimate power.

Cressey again served as the Olbermann Echo Chamber:

They understand that we are trying to monitor not just their communications but also their money.

So since drivers understand that the police are cracking down on traffic violators, that means we should tell them which corners have cop cars hidden around the corner? After all, if they're smart, they'll know anyhow, right? This is such a case of the gallopping dumbs that trying to make sense out of it can make your hair hurt.

Then it's the War Against the Media talking point again, with Norah "Whatever" O'Donnell. She was there to repeat the same stupid argument (because the administration said they would use every means possible against terrorism, that means they can all be made public). KO repeatedly referred to this whole program as "bank-tapping" (despite the fact that no bank was involved), and "Whatever" hammered home the talking point that this is all "attack the media" politics.

The #4 slot had a Countdown rarity: an actual report from NBC that wasn't pre-taped or recycled (the floods). In the "top 3 newsmakers" segment KO bashed the "rabid" Media Research Center, for its findings on the "worst person" segment. Note how dishonestly Keith spun this one:

Of approximately 600 nominees, only 174 of them were conservative. That means roughly 71% of the worsts are not conservative. I'd like to thank the MRC for confirming my point that the segment is apolitical.

This is so deceitful as to qualify as another Olbermann lie. He completely omitted the rest of the statistics: that there were only 23 liberals to the 174 conservatives. And how about the multiple dozens of conservatives who were named "worst", while exactly one lone liberal has ever been given that "honor"?

The #3 slot started out with John Murtha, who got a retraction for an incorrectly reported statement. Note that Olbermann never bothered to report the embarrassing statement itself, only the retraction. As opposed to all the times KO falsely attributes quotes to, say, Bill O'Reilly, and never corrects his own mistakes. But we digress. Oh wait, no we don't, because Mr Bill and attack #98 is next on the propaganda program.

You'll note that our mole in Seacaucus told us yesterday that there would be another attack tonight, and, like Pavlov's dog in a bell-testing factory, Krazy Keith delivered. To kick it off, KO ridiculed Mr Bill's statement that "Rick Kaplan has left MSNBC":

See, by overemphasizing the word "left", he is sending a subtle signal to the dim bulbs in his audience that former MSNBC President Rick Kaplan might have had personal political beliefs that tended towards liberal or left.

No, we're not making that up. He really believes it! Then Olby was back bragging about ratings: he's up, O'Reilly's down. Once again, KO manipulated the data, never pointing out that O'Reilly's viewership is anywhere from five to nine times his, depending on the day of the week. Then he went on a rant about how bad the Fox ratings are, omitting the fact that the lowest rated program on Fox has way more viewers than the highest rated show on MSNBC. Hey, we thought ratings were irrelevant, Krazy. You know, the five billions flies and all? Then Olby delivered his coup de grace to Mr Bill:

You can't even lie well.

You may have a point there, Krazy. You were going to expose "the lies" of Bill O'Reilly in this segment, and all you did is spin numbers. You did not identify one thing O'Reilly said that was incorrect. We concede: you are a much better liar than he is.

The rest: Another plug for the Snakes on a Plane movie (has Olby already abandoned trying to prop up Al Gore's agit-prop fest?), Michael Jackson, Peter Gammonds, and Star Jones.

In the Media Matters Minute, Glenn Beck (conservative) got a runner-up position, Orrin Hatch (R) did too for daring to support the anti-flag-burning amendment, and Brent Bozell (conservative) was "worst person". Oh yeah, this segment is apolitical all right.

And that's The Hour of Spin for this, the 131st day of the Keith Olbermann CoverUp. And the magic number is now two

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"COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN" (8:00 P.M.-9:00 P.M. ET)

Host: Keith Olbermann

Topics/Guests:

• SEN. ARLEN SPECTER (R-PA.) AND JUDICIARY COMMITTEE EXPECTED TO QUESTION BUSH ADMIN. OFFICIALS; NATIONAL REVIEW CALLS FOR NEW YORK TIMES TO LOSE ITS WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS CREDENTIALS: Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor and Publisher
• SUPREME COURT TAKES UP A GLOBAL WARMING CASE; PRES. BUSH SAYS ITS TIME TO GET PAST THE NATURAL VS. MAN-MADE DEBATE: Elizabeth Kolbert, author of "Field Notes from a Catastrophe"
• RUSH LIMBAUGH: Jim Moret, "Inside Edition"

"Rush to Judgment"

Olby began The Hour of Spin with Gallup polls about Iraq. Public opinion is the arbiter of all you know, except for those pesky cable news ratings. Craig Crawford showed up within moments to chuckle and giggle about how the President really doesn't care about polls. Olbermann's Brain seemed to think a big turnout would help Democrats. We are astonished by his unending insights.

Of course Olby had to bring up the "war against the media", you know, the one where's it's wrong to criticize writers or broadcasters unless it's Krazy Keith doing the attacking. Brain called it classic "attack the messenger", plugging his own book at the same time.

KO said the Bush White House is "escalating its war against the media to near-nuclear proportions". This sounds serious! What did they do now? We waited and listened, and waited and listened, but Keith never told us! The only example he gave was Tony Snow saying he wouldn't revoke the NY Times press credentials.

OK, so maybe we're missing something here, but how is that a near-nuclear assault on the media by the White House? You can count Krazy's klaim as reckless hyperbole, or just another Olbermann lie. Take your pick. Meanwhile, Mitchell showed up to give the leftist view of all this, and Keith resurrected one of his favorite tricks, painting whatever happens as a boneheaded bad move for the Bush administration:

Did the White House just buy itself two and a half years of the media working overtime to catch it in anything because...of this reaction, this vitriol?

Mitchell complained that not enough people have rallied to the defense of the Times, and boasted that they did not "rush to judgment" about the story. Neither he nor the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann mentioned any of the prominent Democrats who lobbied the Times against publishing the article (John Murtha, Joe Biden, etc). That's the kind of new that never makes it onto Countdown. Mitchell found a way to drag Katrina into the discussion, thereby earning himself a return trip to The Hour of Spin.

Olby bellowed the phrase "comedian Rush Limbaugh" so many times that it was a relief that the bash Limbaugh segment came up in the #4 slot. Keith slowed himself to be even more classless and sleazy than we realized:

Viagra is usually dispensed in units of 30 pills...Limbaugh was found to have 29 pills on him.

Obviously Krazy is flogging this story simply for the delight of embarrassing someone who actually has people listening to him. Oh, and don't expect any concerns from KO about privacy how someone's pharmacological information "leaked" out to the public. Moret (from "Inside Edition", the show Keith has ridiculed so many times) said Limbaugh's home free if/when his doctor confirms that he gave Rush the pills. But KO kept pressing for some way the prosecutor could use this against Rush, doing his best to obscure the fact that there was no violation of Florida law.

In the "top newsmaker" segment Olby decided to lift a story from TVNewser about how Brit Hume (and, of course, Bill O'Reilly) have faced some audience declines over the past year. What happened to the famous Olbermann dismissal of ratings as irrelevant ("five billion flies can't be wrong")? Well, if KO now thinks they're important, we must do our duty here at Olbermann Watch:

June 2006
O'Reilly Factor: 2,141,000 viewers
Brit Hume: 1,178,000 viewers
Countdown: 286,000 viewers

We don't think Krazy Keith is the right guy to be bringing up ratings trends.

After the half-way mark, it was global warming propaganda time, with a single guest who expressed her gw-fundamentalist viewpoint unchallenged and uncontested. How fundamentalist is she? What about the debate about whether it's man-made? "There is no debate." So much for that. Oh, there was another plug for Al Gore's movie. Talk about declining audiences!

Keith introduced the #2 story (Harry Potter, recycled video) with a vignette about the Hitchcock film "The Trouble with Harry", calling it a "bomb". (It took in three times its cost at the box office, but why ruin a good OlbyTale?) Then Star Jones, Rosie O'Donnell, Boy George, Axl Rose, and some baseball manager.

In the #1 slot, a new "feature" called "Keith's Olbermann's America", complete with supposed-to-be-funny animation of KO in a bus. But the segment was just more recycled video (this time not even from the network mothership but from a local station). You can't expect Keith to actually get on that bus and report, can you? He might bump his head.

And that's The Hour of Spin for this, the 130th day of the Keith Olbermann CoverUp. And the magic number is still three. But our mole in Seacaucus (not The Laughing Stagehand) reports that will change tomorrow.

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In what will come as no surprise to clear-thinking Olbermann Watch readers, the Media Research Center has published its report on its analysis of Keith Olbermann's choices for "Worst Person in the World" which found that KO attacks conservatives over liberals at close to a 9 to 1 ratio. Olbermann, has repeatedly claimed he is not "political" and denies any bias.

Of the 197 politically-salient designees, nearly nine out of ten (174, or 88%) attacked conservative targets or ideas, compared with 23 nominees (12%) in which liberals were on the receiving end of Olbermann's ire.

Here's a breakdown of KO's top targets:

Bill O'Reilly - 42
Rush Limbaugh - 11
Ann Coulter - 9
Brit Hume - 4
Neal Boortz - 3
Glenn Beck - 3
The New York Post - 2
Michelle Malkin - 2

NOTE: Saddam Hussein - 2

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"COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN" (8:00-9:00 P.M. ET)

Host: Keith Olbermann

Topics/Guests:

• SWIFT TERROR TRACKING: Dana Milbank, Washington Post
• IRAQ PLANS: Richard Wolffe, Newsweek
• LANCE ARMSTRONG: Stephen Madden
• U.S LOOKING THROUGH AMERICANS INTERNATIONAL BANK RECORDS: Michael Musto, Village Voice

"Hack Attack"

The infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann wasted no time. Disclosing a top secret anti-terrorism program makes it more difficult to prevent future attacks, says Dick Cheney. Says Krazy Keith:

Uh huh. Do they really believe that tripe?

Then it's on to the "genesis of Watergate", Richard Nixon (props to SMG for calling it again!), and blaming the media. On OlbyPlanet, attacking the media is a bad thing. Unless it's Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, Ann Coulter, John Gibson...and unless it's comedian Keith Olbermann who's doing the attacking. Then in one short phrase, we get a Krazy Keith distortion and a genuine Olbermann lie:

warrant-free, unauthorized administration access to some of the international banking records of Americans

Distortion: "warrant-free", but with properly served subpoenas. Lie: "unauthorized" (several federal laws give the executive branch precisely this authority). Olby went on to talk about the "scapegoating" of the papers that printed classified secrets, then pulled a typical Countdown trick: he read the statement from NY Times's Bill Keller (complete with on-screen text), but the response from Secretary Snow was relegated to just a couple of out-of-context phrases buried in a question to Dana Milbank.

Milbank, sans goofy garb, complained that "press freedoms are being broken down", citing...the Scooter Libby case. The very one Krazy Keith has been hyping for months! Then Olby asked:

Where was the umbrage and the vitriol about the leakers? The Times did not steal these documents.

Of course, what the President said was:

We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm

KO lied again about the SWIFT program ("at best legally questionable"), and Dana somehow morphed from that to flag-burning and how the proposed amendment links us to Iran! After another golden oldie (the Iraq informant "curveball" again), the first commercial break mercifully arrived.

In the #4 slot, Keith's assignment was to misrepresent the so-called troop withdrawal plans in Iraq. So the entire story was framed as if this is the plan for Iraq, not just one of multiple plans that are always on the drawing board. Wolffe made mention of that fact, but KO was having none of it:

the Republicans on the hill were calling the Democrats everything from cut-and-joggers to unpatriotic, it seems to leave only two options here: either the Republicans on the hill didn't know about those conversations, or they were to put it politely disingenous...

Another Olby slur (what Republicans have called "the Democrats" unpatriotic?), and more spin. What about the third possibility: that this is just one plan of many? What about the fact that the Generals running the war proposing any plan have a bit more credibility than politicians sitting around in DC trying to make gains in an election? But Krazy Keith suggests that it's the Generals, rather than the politicians, who are playing politics:

Does that really have to do with conditions on the ground in Iraq or does it have to do with the midterm elections?

Maybe Olby should have asked MSNBC's own military analyst, Gen Barry McCaffrey, who said politics did not control these decisions, and no plan would be approved by the military that didn't make military sense. Oh, apparently that's why McCaffrey is absent from The Hour of Spin tonight.

After oddball, a bit about "comedian Rush Limbaugh" being stopped at customs for possessing prescription medicine in someone else's name. Olby made it a point to state that "the office would not identify the prescription drug", but the only report available (filed at 7:52 pm) not only does so, but also includes the caveat that he was detained for "possible" possession of the drug(s). KO then added, "No comment from comedian Rush Limbaugh".

But the Olbermann Attack Machine was just getting warmed up. It was time to return to another KO bete noir, Lance Armstrong. Krazy Keith, you will recall, insisted Armstrong took illegal drugs based on the fact that the biker once crossed a picket line. So Krazy recycled the current rumors: he threatened someone, he cheated, he took drugs, etc. Madden's responses poured cold water on much of this, but KO was undeterred:

Is there some grain of truth at the center of this?...Which of these two things is more plausible: that the French media has this vendetta against Lance Armstrong and will go to any length to discredit him, or that Lance Armstrong is actually a cheater who has largely been given a pass by the American media?

Hey, watch out there, Olby. Are you attacking the media again? Are you making the sports magazines "scapegoats"? And if you wondering if it's plausible someone could have a vendetta against Lance Armstrong, have you looked in the mirror lately? Madden mentioned that the French have an axe to grind given their dismal Tour de France record, but nothing stops a KO Smear Attack:

So conceivably none of this could be true, or ranging all the way to all of this could be true?

A typical Keith Olbermann question: "Could this be true?" You don't need a biking expert to answer that! Partisan hacks masquerading as journalists ask "could this be true" when they know damn well anything that's possible could be true, and they want to leave the impression that it is.

After enduring 40 minutes of such sleazy detritus, any normal viewer would have an uncontrollable urge to take a shower. But comedian Keith Olbermann wasn't finished. He still served up recycled NBC video (Warren Buffett), and a laundry list of celebrities: Aaron Spelling, Harry Potter, JK Rowling, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Katie Holmes, the creepy Michael Musto, and, yes, Cruise News! More "stories my producers are forcing me cover", according to Keith "I answer to nobody" Olbermann.

Roger Ailes was "worst person" because he wants his people to work harder. (Don't try to make sense out of it. It's OlbyLogic.) We will skip transcribing all the juvenile insults Krazy squeezed into just three sentences. Wait, isn't this attacking the media?

And that's The Hour of Spin for this, the 129th day of the Keith Olbermann CoverUp. And the magic number is still three.

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"COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN" (8:00-9:00 P.M. ET)

Host: Keith Olbermann

Topics/Guests:

• MIAMI TERROR ARRESTS: Evan Kohlmann, MSNBC terrorism analyst and Global Terror Alert founder
• U.S LOOKING THROUGH AMERICANS INTERNATIONAL BANK RECORDS: Jonathan Turley, constitutional law expert and George Washington University law professor

"Defending the Indefensible"

Expect a full-bore Spinorama tonight. Possible Olbermann tactics: the Miami 7 are amateurs, little more than wannabees. The executive branch is grabbing power again with an illegal search of bank records (despite the fact that the actions violated no statute, and in fact were authorized by a 1977 law). Of course, the most Olbermannesque strategy would be to use all of the above, and tie them together to boot. E.g.: Newspapers reveal another illegal power grab by the imperial Bush Presidency, and just by coincidence the feds decide to execute an arrest in Miami, complete with hoopla and press conferences. You don't have to be a conspiratorialist to find the timing of this arrest suspicious. And so forth.

9:16 PM: Did we call it or what? No sooner did The Hour of Spin commence, than comedian Keith Olbermann, like Pavlov's dog in a bell-testing factory, took the bait:

How amazing that that story broke just after the government failed to strongarm news organizations into not running the bank tapping story... Another terror timeline that either validates the idea that an endless series of conventient coincidences is just an endless series of convenient coincidences, or that validates the idea that somebody has memorized Orwell's 1984. Damaging news coming out about more invasions of privacy in the name of counter-terrorism? Not if there's chilling news coming out about a home grown plot bigger than 9/11.... They have the timing of Michael Jordan, don't they?

Questioning the timing? Check! (Props to SMG, who predicted the Orwell reference. Check!)

KO lied, calling the bank records program "bending of the law" (it's directly authorized by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and is patently legal). (Check!) Then it was on to minimize the terror arrests, and the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann faced a quandary. MSNBC's terrorism analysts have been proclaiming through the day that the arrest of the Liberty City 7 was a genuine victory in the war on terror. Roger Cressey was particularly outspoken on that point. Well then, perhaps he could turn to Walid Phares. Oh no, we can't have that. Keith disinvited him once already because he doesn't conform to OlbySpeak. So that leaves Evan Kohlmann.

But first, KO wanted to know about the banking scheme, which he painted as useless because Al Qaeda doesn't use traditional banking methods. Kohlmann said to some extent they do, but there's more to investigations than just monitoring bank records. Then on to the spin o' the day:

The law enforcement people say they didn't have the weapons...is this far enough over the line of trash talking and wannabeeism and even entrapment to merit all this attention and the comparisons to the 9/11 plan?

Kudos to KO for regurgitating so much spin and nonsense into one sentence. They didn't have weapons? So we shouldn't arrest terrorists until they have a bomb and can explode it? "Wannabeeism"? Another prediction bears fruit. (Check!) "Entrapment"? For the non-lawyers out there, the concept of "entrapment" has only one relevance: it is a defense raised by the accused at trial. In other words, just 24 hours after suspected terrorists are arrested, the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann is already acting as their defense attorney! And without one speck of evidence to back it up.

Kohlmann sensibly pointed out