It's bad enough when you can't keep your stories straight from one day to the next. But with the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann, he can't keep his stories straight from Monday morning to Monday night!

This is tonight's open thread for tonight's Hour of Spin. We need you to document the outrageous lies and vertiginous spin of the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann. Watch Oralmann if you dare, and do your recapping right here. Comments are open!

The Cable Gamer has detailed MSNBC's Pro-Obama strategy: Suck up to the Obama Left, and thereby get all the Barack Obama fans to watch as MSNBC-ers (and to a lesser extent, NBC) cheerlead for the O-Man. (That's Obama, not Keith Olbermann, in case you were wondering.) In addition, TCG has noted the unforeseen upside: GE Capital, sister company to MSNBC (as well as to CNBC and NBC) is now on the receiving end of a $139 billion--that's billion with a "b"--federal loan guarantee, as part of the overall Wall Street bailout.

OK, that's the good news for MSNBC.

The bad news is that to implement this strategy, MSNBC had to rely on some loose cannons. Very loose. One such cannon, of course, is Olbermann. And another is Chris Matthews. Any publicly traded corporation--with all the scrutiny, and the presumption of sober seriousness that comes from being the vessel of shareholder ownership--that links its fate to loose cannons will, eventually, find itself blown up.

And Matthews is our case study for today--still busy, as he has been for the past year, trashing Hillary Rodham Clinton.

One can read this item, from The New York Post's "Page Six," and see clear signs of chronic puffing, an early indicator of inevitable inflation, followed by blowing up:

HARDBALL" host Chris Matthews and the other "castratos" at MSNBC shouldn't hold their breath waiting for a Hillary Clinton interview.

"She's just a soap opera. If he doesn't pick her, everyone will say she's been dissed again, we'll have to live through that again."

Now, is it really wise for Matthews to be carrying on the feud against Hillary, even after his man, Obama, has won the nomination and the election? Do the suits at MSNBC, and parents NBC-Universal and GE, really want to keep attacking her--and by implication, all of her supporters? And all of those who don't want to think that a commentator, and his network have been completely captured by one liberal sliver of the population?

The picture of what Matthews actually believes is a bit muddled, however. As "P6" further notes:

Matthews seems to be playing both sides of the fence. The host, who apologized to Clinton last year for claiming she got where she was because "her husband messed around," said on-air last Friday: "Look, I think that since she lost the fight for the nomination, [Clinton] has been not just a good soldier, she has sang the tune of [Obama]. She's been illustrious, she's been admirable . . . her spirit seems to be with him."

A rep for Clinton declined to comment while a rep for Matthews didn't return e-mails.

So which are we to believe, Chris? What you said on the Acela (which squares with what you said on MSNBC air for a year), or what you have said, here and there, since the election? I think that the obvious preponderance of evidence is that Matthews' train talk is the real Matthews.

And that's a problem for MSNBC as it tries to negotiate its way into 2009. Will it be all Obama-olatry all the time? If so, that'll be hard to watch, even for Democrats--especially Hillary Clinton-type Democrats.

And eventually, all those non-Obama Democrats, to say nothing of independents and Republicans, are going to be asking Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, why the rest of us must subsidize the left-liberalism of GE's MSNBC unit.

GE is a bigger company than MSNBC, and there might well be some non-Obamans inside the corporate structure, although of late, you wouldn't know it.

Cross-posted from The Cable Game

This is tonight's open thread for tonight's Hour of Spin. We need you to document the outrageous lies and vertiginous spin of the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann. Watch Oralmann if you dare, and do your recapping right here. Comments are open!

This is tonight's open thread for your comments and recapping of The Hour of Spin. The infamous, deplorable one has been busy over at his blog. A post appeared that actually criticized Krazy Keith's Olbsession with Mr Bill O'Reilly. So naturally Merkle had to respond, even if in an utterly incomprehensible fashion.

But wait, there's more! Perhaps to change the subject away from the offending column, Bathtub Boy whips up a post of his own, and stokes the fires with additional comments like this one--just as incomprehensible as ever (his basic point: I'm neutral so I won't vote, unless I decide that I will...don't try to make sense out of it, it's OlbyLogic).

So enjoy tonight's Hour of Spin, if you dare. Comments are open!

This is the recappers' comment thread for Countdown, November 13 2008. You can post your reactions to tonight's Hour of Spin, but we have something special for you to enjoy (courtesy of MikeC).

Opie and Anthony deliver a scathing vivisection of Keith Oralmann's latest Special Education Komment. Warning: the language is R-rated, at least. In two parts:

BREAKING NEWS!

MSNBC partisan hack David "Karl Rove will be indicted" Shuster once again been caught with his pants down:

MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.

David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a Fox News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent.

My favorite part is how Eisenstad is supposedly a "a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy". The Harding Institute? That is hilarious.

While this certainly brings back memories from 2005 and 2006 of MSNBC's repeated fantasies about a Karl Rove indictment in the Plame Leak investigation, I harken further back to 2004 when Keith did a brilliant segment on a made-up story from Indiana's version of The Onion, The Hoosier Gazette:

On September 7th, Olbermann reported on an Indiana University study that found parents lose 12 to 20 IQ points after having children and quoted a Dr. Hosung Lee saying the report "explains why every parent thinks their child is the smartest kid in the class or the best athlete... even if that child is as dumb as a box of rocks or needs a calendar to time their 40-yard dash." And this was not just any story is was Countdown's "number one story of the day". Olbermann would have done well to trust the instincts of his next guest, Carl Reiner, who, when asked "Do you buy any of this?", replied "Not at all."

Countdown viewers may be forgiven for believing that Olbermann had read or even skimmed the study he was reporting on, or given Dr. Lee a jingle on the telephone, since he did not cite any source for his information. Despite presenting the news as original reporting, Olbermann had, in fact, pilfered the story from a single, unattributed source. For those of you who made it through high school this is sometimes referred to as "plagiarizing." And what was this single, unimpeachable source that formed the bedrock for Keith's MSNBC news report? The New York Times? The Associated Press? The New England Journal of Medicine? How about the online edition of The Hoosier Gazette?

Last night I attended the Media Law Resource Center Annual Dinner which featured a panel discussion with Joe Lockhart, David Gergen and Michael Beschloss, moderated by Martha Raddatz.

Readers will recall that during the presidential campaign Obama ran an ad mocking McCain for not using the Internet. The Obama campaign pulled the ad when it came out that McCain had trouble using keyboards due to his war injuries.

This came to mind when Lockhart made a startling revelation. According to the former Clinton spokesman said that during eight years in office, Bill Clinton used the Internet TWICE. The first time was a photo op intended to show the President was hip to the Internet (i.e. it was fake). The photo-op was Clinton ordering a Christmas present (a smoked ham) online. If that sounds familiar, recall that in Rob Reiner's film The American President, Michael Douglas struggles to send Annette Bening flowers, gives up and sends her a smoked ham.

The second time was election night 1998. Lockhart describes how 300 people were invited to the White House to watch the returns. Clinton was shown a computer with all the return data from across the United States. He proceeded to ignore the guests and spent several hours clicking away, fascinated that so much information was available on the web. Gergen tried to help Lockhart out by saying something to the effect of the Internet not being a big deal back then.

Other than that, Lockhart says, Clinton never used the Internet while in office. That's funny considering at Clinton's Vice President invented the Internet, right? Or that the Internet boom occurred during Clinton's second term? Or that Clinton likes to take credit for the stock market bubble that resulted? I suppose had someone shown Clinton that there was porn on the web, his Internet usage might have a bit higher.

This is the recappers' comment thread for Countdown, November 12 2008. Post your comments on tonight's Hour of Spin. It falls on you--the clear-thinking readers of Olbermann Watch--to document Oralmann's diseased rantings for posterity.

Be an Olbermann Watch blogger--without all the muss and fuss! Comments are open!

This is the recappers' comment thread for Countdown, November 11 2008. We need you, the clear-headed readers of the #1 Olbermann blog in the world, to document Krazy Keith's diseased rantings for posterity.

If you want a pre-show laugh, or perhaps it might be more appropriately said a pre-show gag-inducing bit of self-congratulations from the most narcissistic egotist on television, check out Bathtub Boy's latest drivel over at his favorite blog, Ye Olde Daily Kos. It's another round of Jimmy Legs almost breaking a bone in his arm as he twists and contorts to yet again pack himself on the back.

But we digress. Be an Olbermann Watch blogger--without all the muss and fuss. Comments are open!

This is tonight's open thread for tonight's Hour of Spin. We need you to document the outrageous lies and vertiginous spin of the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann. Watch Oralmann if you dare, and do your recapping right here. Comments are open!

Our good friends Brian Selter at The New York Times is reporting that his old pal Keith Olbermann has gotten a new contract which extends Olbermann past the 2012 election and about doubles his current salary.

MSNBC essentially tore up his Feb. 2007 contract (reportedly worth up to $4 million a year) and wrote a new one, according to two employees with knowledge of the agreement. The new contract is valued at about $7.5 million a year, one of the people said.

Mr. Olbermann will continue to anchor “Countdown” and co-host NBC’s “Football Night in America.” Reinforcing Mr. Olbermann’s value to MSNBC, the network said he would “play a prominent role” in “all major news events.”

Mark Newgent has an excellent piece in today's Baltimore History Examiner that all Olbermann Watch readers need to take a few minutes to study.

The next time Olbermann invokes the memory of Edward R. Murrow. Remember this: Murrow’s impetus to take on Joseph McCarthy was the senator’s accusation that State Department official Laurence Duggan, a friend of Murrow, was a Soviet spy. Duggan’s father Stephen was Murrow’s mentor at the Institute for International Education in the 1930s. In the aftermath of the Alger Hiss case in 1948, Laurence Duggan jumped or was pushed out the window of his 16th floor office in Manhattan. Murrow vigorously defended Duggan’s integrity, turning him into a liberal martyr destroyed by “right-wing hate.” However, as the Venona decrypts reveal, Duggan was one of the most prodigious American spies for the Soviets. According to Soviet agent Boris Bazarov, Duggan had said that the only reason he stayed at his "hateful job in the State Department.. was the idea of being useful for our cause." Remember that the next time Olbermann ends one of his Special Comment screeds with, “good night and good luck.”

Insider Tip on Illegal Cigar Lounge at Isaac Young Middle School Provokes Armed Response from School District

Earlier this week, I received my first "insider tip" from a source at the Isaac E. Young Middle School. My effort to follow up on that tip was rewarded by a knock at the door from two New Rochelle Police detectives carrying 9 mm handguns on their hips. (continued)

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For regular readers who have been wondering why I have been only lightly involved with OlbyWatch over the past few weeks, this post should give you an idea of the crazy things I've been dealing with elsewhere. Over the summer I agreed to help some residents where I live in New Rochelle, NY to set up a web site to combat problems with the local school district. They've been asking me for years to help them set up a community site/blog but I begged off knowing that once I got involved it would take a lot of my free time to get this site up and running. Boy has it.

What I did not expect was a knock at my door from two detectives following up on a false complaint filed by a local school official in an attempt to dissuade me from posting a story that would be embarrassing for him. It's not exactly the sort of national news story I would normally cover here but I figure some regular readers might be wondering what I have been doing with myself evenings and weekend.

Of course, the incident is pretty minor given the scope of the problems that have been surfacing at the school run by a hack named Anthony Bongo, a school principal who has turned a local middle school into his own little fiefdom. There are all sorts of bad things happening at the school. I have been going about the process of documenting the various tips we've received since August.

One of the worst things was a major racial incident at the school which did make the local papers. Last year a white supervisor with black employees hung a stuff monkey on a noose in the building. When a black employee, a janitor, complained and removed the noose the supervisor responded by hanging up TWO more nooses. Now, you might think this would get someone fired. Nope. The guy got a reprimand. After the NAACP got involved they upped that to a three week suspension. Now, the NAACP has filed a lawsuit which is sure to cost local taxpayers a small fortune.

So when I said "bad" I mean REALLY bad.

Warning: the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann is pimping his show again, trying to get his sinking ratings back in order. At Oralmann's blog (Daily Kos) Merkle is doing his best to pump up interest in an exciting new feature tonight: a Sarah Palin attack! Just for a change.

Our clear-headed readers will undoubtedly find this much more edifying:

This is the recappers' comment thread for Countdown, November 6 2008. Post your comments on tonight's Hour of Spin. Note everything salient: smears, distortions, bias, lies, the works. Watch the first showing, the repeat, or view the videos at the Countdown website. It falls on you--the clear-thinking readers of Olbermann Watch--to document Oralmann's diseased rantings for posterity.

Be an Olbermann Watch blogger--without all the muss and fuss. Comments are open!

We've been telling you for years, but now the newest miracle of high-tech science proves it! As the newly-launched Real Scoop explains:

RealScoop rates the believability of statements made by celebrities, athletes and politicians. Our BELIEVABILITY METER™ utilizes the world's leading voice analysis technology to analyze over 100 vocal elements. Be the first to uncover the RealScoop as the BELIEVABILITY METER™ displays color coded results from left to right with the most believable statements in green and turning to red as they become more questionable.

Watch the meters as the last shreds of Keith Oralmann's credibility circle the drain:

This is the recappers' comment thread for Countdown, November 5 2008. Post your comments on tonight's Hour of Spin. Note everything salient: smears, distortions, bias, lies, the works. Watch the first showing, the repeat, or view the videos at the Countdown website. It falls on you--the clear-thinking readers of Olbermann Watch--to document Oralmann's diseased rantings for posterity.

Be an Olbermann Watch blogger--without all the muss and fuss! Comments are open!

Barack Obama's victory speech overstimulated the sensitive neuro-receptors in Chris Matthews' lower left extremity and caused it to hum like a tuning fork.

The Leg couldn't help feeling it had played a small role in making this historic night possible.

Yes, Chris, MSNBC and pretty much the entire broadcast news industry traded the last bits of their journalistic credibility in the bacchanal of fawning coverage. Sure, Matthews' and Olbermann's Bush-Derangement and over-the-top Obama water-carrying during the election made them a national punchline.

But as the nation's union bosses, trial lawyers, greivance mongers, Israel haters, and global warming hysterics uncorked the champagne and prepared their legislative agendas--The Leg could be heard to whisper:

"Totally, worth it, man . . . totally worth it."

{As cross-posted at Chris Matthews Leg}

Comments are open!

Isn't it interesting that on the very day that Barack Obama wins the presidency, the U.S. Treasury department announces a change in its $700 billion Wall Street bailout program--a change that would benefit MSNBC, the most pro-Obama news network? And also benefit NBC, which is also no slouch when it comes to pro-Obama-tude? The common connection, of course, is GE, and its subsidiary, GE Capital.

Sounds like payback to me, or is it payoff? We can presume that it's all legal, according to the fungible "legality" that has prevailed in Washington for the past six weeks, since the bailout was proposed and enacted. But of course, the bailout program--which seems to change every few days--is not not in the least transparent, and it gets murkier and murkier, leaving the taxpayers and other interested parties to search for clues where they can be gleaned.

So how, exactly, is the bailout going to be benefit MSNBC? And NBC? How is money going to pass from the folks on Main Street to the sharpies on Wall Street, and then to the Obama-loving likes of Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, David Gregory, and Andrea Mitchell?

(And let's not forget CNBC, which shamelessly shilled for the bailout when Congress was considering it. At the time I just thought that Maria Bartiromo & Co. were sticking up for the class interest of Wall Street--now it looks like they were sticking up, directly, for their own corporate interest in CNBC as a wholly owned subsidiary of GE.)

Here's the way the deal is going to work, as reported by Deborah Solomon, writing in The Wall Street Journal this morning, and confirmed everywhere since:

The Treasury Department is considering using more of its $700 billion rescue fund to buy stakes in a broad range of financial companies, not just banks and insurers, after tentative signs of the program's success, according to people familiar with the matter.

In focus are companies that provide financing to the broad economy, including bond insurers and specialty finance firms such as General Electric Co.'s GE Capital unit, CIT Group Inc. and others, these people said.

That's clear enough, isn't it? GE Capital now in line to get bailout money. Are there any rules and procedures determining who gets what? Or can the Treasury just look up at, say, the election returns and make a big policy change? Apparently so.

But in the meantime, GE investors are happy at the news that the federal gravy train is chugging their way: GE stock price jumped this morning: the Reuters headline was, "GE, CIT rise after report on bailout funds."

The Cable Gamer doesn't pretend to be a Wall Street expert, but I have always been fascinated by the relationship between the cable newsers, CNBC and MSNBC, and their corporate parent, NBC. And then, in turn, the relationship between NBC and its corporate parent, General Electric. But of course, GE--the sixth-largest company in America, according to Fortune mag--has many other "children," too, including, interestingly enough, GE Capital.

And now GE Capital is in line to get money from Uncle Sam. All of a sudden, the long strange trip of MSNBC, way to the political left, starts to take on a certain logic. Sure, MSNBC has taken some hits for its obvious pro-Obama bias, but at the same time, MSNBC has surely made some friends. Maybe, in effect, MSNBC placed a bet on Obama. That sure would explain why, during the Democratic primary campaign, MSNBC was the flagship of pro-Obama-ism in the media, mobilizing Dems to support the Obama even over Hillary Rodham Clinton. And then, during the general election, well, every night of MSNBC coverage was a five-hour Obama-infomercial. Does anybody doubt that the Obamans will remember who their friends were? That MSNBC will be the favorite cable news network for many VIPs in Obama world? All of a sudden, the "go left" plan starts to look like Machiavellian genius.

And now, we learn this morning, that the government stands poised to return the favor to MSNBC's parent--in a very real way, a boost to the corporate bottom line. Does the government do anything in increments of less than a billion dollar these days? Probably not. So a billion or more to GE Capital will surely trickle down, some of it, to all the other GE properties, including the news networks.

Now technically, of course, the Treasury is still in the hands of the Bush administration, but everybody knows that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is much closer to the Democrats than to the Republicans, and that his key aides and advisers are all Wall Streeters. Which means that when they all cycle through the revolving door, back to Wall Street, it would make sense for them to have plenty of friends among the Democrats who will now control both the executive and legislative branches. (Who needs Republicans anymore?)

So there you have it. Now it's not a done deal yet, and GE/GE Capital is being cautious: "This is not something we expect," said spokesman Russell Wilkerson. "If it were offered, we would evaluate it." But if you translate the coy corporate-speak, GE will eagerly take the money. And those long-suffering GE shareholders, having watched helplessly as their stock has declined by two-thirds over the last seven years, since Jeff Immelt took over from Jack Welch, will cheer. But of course: if the government hands out money, people will have their hand out.

The final proof, of course, will come if, in fact, GE Capital gets a big bailout check from the government. If it does, well, from a legal point of view, there's probably not much that could be done about it--now doubt the smartest lawyers on Wall Street and in Washington will all swear to the total legality of the transaction.

But from a political point of view, from a fairness point of view, Republicans and conservatives--and fair-minded folks of all partisan and ideological persuasions--should be outraged by what seems destined to happen. The mere idea that the the government would seek to give money to media outlets is an outrage.

It was bad enough that the government created a 12-digit slush fund to bail out Goldman Sachs and all the rest of 'em on Wall Street. But it's even worse if the money goes to the media--that's not just bad policy, that's a threat to the First Amendment.

Do we really want the government subsidizing the private media? Being able to reward favorable coverage with financial favors? Do we really want the federal government being able to dangle cash outlays, or the prospect of such outlays, over the heads of news outfits? After all, if the government can bestow money on MSNBC through GE, then what other corporate connections might be made in the future? That is, what other corporate media chief might decide that he or she needs a bailout--perhaps of some distant subsidiary, the connection to which the public doesn't see? The possibilities for deep corruption are endless.

"Sunlight is the best disinfectant," wrote Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis decades ago. He was right, of course, but sunlight doesn't do as much good if the light only falls on the corruption after it has happened.

But this time, we've been tipped off. Now is the time to raise a stink, lest Olbermann & Co. reap a huge bonus for their politicking, a bonus provided to them by American taxpayers.

At a rock bottom minimum, if GE, or any subsidiary of GE, gets government bailout money, it should announce in advance that it will spin off its media subsidiaries, so as to separate government financial benefits from media services to the government.

Surely all the serious journalists at NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC would want that insulation--so they can never be accused of tilting their coverage in return for financial gain. Because right now, it looks like GE shrewdly deployed its media assets to gain political leverage on Uncle Sugar--and it worked!

Cross-posted from The Cable Game.

This is tonight's open thread for tonight's Hour of Spin. Oralmann is off at his blog again, trying to pimp his show tonight to keep his ratings inflated among the Kossacks. Tonight it's something about the McCain campaign lying about Saturday Night Live! Yeah, it sounds not that far away from his paranoid diatribe about the apartment that wouldn't let his kitty in. Oh wait, that was Ben Affleck.

Watch Oralmann if you dare, and do your recapping right here. Comments are open!

The dry, shriveled husk of Keith Olbermann's sense of shame was pretty stoked to learn that Saturday Night Live was planning, in Keith's words, "a tribute" to the Countdown host, and that the great Ben Affleck was "doing" him. (btw, Olbermann never caught on to why The Leg giggled every time Olbermann would boast to someone, "Ben Affleck is going to do me on SNL!")

However, after Affleck's dead-on, 8 minute, 42 second spittle-flecked, psychosis-fueled rendition, Olby's soul-void seemed genuinely perplexed: "What was so funny about that? And why was the audience laughing? They could have just run a clip of my show."

The Leg wasn't sure how to break it to Keith that he and Chris are so completely out of control with mindless partisanship that even their friends and allies are starting to be embarrassed by them.

The Oracle of the Leg notes that the humorless, seething comment mobs at The Daily Kos and The Huffington Post weren't amused either. He suspects they've been living in the "progressive" echo chamber for so long that they, like Keith, have lost the capacity for self-awareness. Sort of like the way certain species of shrimp that live in underwater caverns have evolved without eyes, color, or ability to communicate without using bombastic, self-important cliches.

{As cross-posted at Chris Matthews Leg}

Keith is going to do his best to laugh it off but there is no doubt this is not a good natured satire of Olbermann. He is thoroughly skewered to the point that anyone who has seen it will not watch Countdown the same way again. I'd say the Hillary supporters on SNL have finally had their revenge:

Review Roundup

"Brilliant" - Jake Tapper, ABC News

"Not Funny" - Huffington Post

"An All-Star Performance - Chicago Tribune/Red Eye

"Affleck Kills" - Howard Mortman/Examiner.com

"Savage" - Politico

"Long and Savage" - Editor & Publisher

"Devastating" - Time Magazine/Swampland