MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday night used his Countdown show to deliver a vitriolic personal attack on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “a reality check of Donald Rumsfeld's incendiary speech, a special comment on his attack on your right to disagree.” Olbermann concluded his program with a six-minute diatribe against Rumsfeld: “The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack. Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.” Olbermann equated the Bush administration with “the English government of Neville Chamberlain” which "knew that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated.” The MSNBC star charged, “The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.” The U.S., Olbermann asserted before concluding with Edward R. Murrow's "we must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," now “faces a new type of fascism.”

Olbermann opened his hour by claiming that during a Tuesday speech before the American Legion convention, Rumsfeld “compared critics of the current war in Iraq to those who tried to appease Adolf Hitler and the Nazis before World War II.” In fact, Rumsfeld simply worried about how not all realize how “we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism” from the Islamic world. Olbermann brought aboard DNC Chairman Howard Dean, proposing to him: “Is it, do you know, technically possible to impeach a Secretary of Defense and have we gotten to that stage after these remarks?” (Transcript follows. I realize Mark Finkelstein beat me on some of Olbermann's rant, but this post has additional quotes and video)

Video clip (3:20): Real (5.6 MB), Windows Media (6.5 MB), plus MP3 audio (1.2 MB)

Norah O'Donnell, Roger Simon, and Evan Thomas all seemed to agree on tonight's "Hardball" that there's no way that President Bush actually read The Stranger by Albert Camus and three Shakespeare plays as he claimed in an interview with Brian Williams yesterday. In other words, all together now, "Bush is an idiot." The originality of the criticism of President Bush continues to baffle my mind as I'm sure it does yours as well.

Video available here.

Of the three, Evan Thomas is by far the worst, joking that he "doesn't believe President Bush does read"--which draws a sizable laugh from O'Donnell--and then continues by saying, "but before we get too snooty about this, he does read some and, you know, that's not a bad thing. If there's some intellectual curiosity by the President, it's to be encouraged."

Looking back, it all seems so predictable. The relentless criticism, the countless sneering jabs from Keith Olbermann directed at the Bush administration were building to an inexorable climax.  It came tonight.  Olbermann flatly accused the Bush administration of representing "a new type of fascism."

Though the denouement was inevitable, the proximate cause of Olbermann's tirade was Donald Rumsfeld's speech to the American Legion on Tuesday in which he suggested that opponents of the war in Iraq have adopted the same attitude that slowed a military response to Hitler.  Rumsfeld asserted that radical Islam represents "a new type of fascism."

I was watching this video from Fox News' Greg Palkot (click on Video and select "Deadly Airstrike") reporting on the Qana incident when something caught my eye. I got a screen shot of the guy with the torn shirt getting UP from the stretcher to show that he was not "stretcher" material like they presented it when I noticed something in the corner of the video. Here's the screenshot...

Everyone is just kinda standing around. Mr. Checkered Shirt is talking on his cellphone. Not a lot of emotion despite the tragedy that has taken place. Even Mr. StretcherMan looks bored. But look at the top right hand corner. There is Mr. White TShirt putting little Zaynab with the pink shirt on display. There is no scene audio to the video - just Greg Palkot reporting.

Crawling out from behind the now failed Scooter Libby rock, Schumer again opens the democrat playbook and bypasses the now buried 2006 DNC agenda to tell us about all of their overwhelming wins in the upcoming election.

Dana Milbank
Wednesday, August 30, 2006; A02

Some see the glass as half empty, others as half full. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) sees it as overflowing.

Briefing reporters yesterday on Democrats' prospects in the midterm elections,Schumer, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, had trouble thinking of a single race Republicans will win. ...

In yet another sign of its rapid decline, Air America Radio has just FIRED talk show host Mike Malloy. Although Malloy frequently spouted wild tinfoil hat theories based on no facts, he did have a devout fan club among the extreme left. As a result, Air America radio is about to lose even more listeners as is evidenced by the outrage over this firing in the leftist blogosphere. Some sample comments over the Malloy firing from the Democratic Underground:

"I will not be listening to AAR if mike is not part of their line-up, I love Randi but not enough to tune in to an outlet that is destroying itself from within."

"I predict that Firing Malloy will be the end of Air America."

"Air America is dead to me."

"Shultz, Franken and the rest of the remaining lot ... are nothing but useless boring idiots IMO."

There are many more similar (and more profane) comments of outrage from the leftist blogosphere over the Mike Malloy firing at the DUmmie FUnnies.

Over at the MRC's BusinessandMedia.org Web site, I take a look at how CNN's Ali Velshi delivered a biased broadside against the insurance industry on today's "American Morning."

In between stories of frustrated insurance claimants, Velshi shared that “the insurance industry says that some in the media and CNN in particular haven’t given them a fair shake.” In response, Velshi added that he “invited the CEO of State Farm” and the president and CEO of Allstate were “unable to accommodate our request for an interview either.”

Yet elsewhere in his story, Velshi admitted that one insurance company was unable to talk to Velshi about individual cases, exactly the topic of Velshi’s story: individual cases of frustrated insurance claimants.

On the August 28th edition of Fox New's syndicated Geraldo At Large, Geraldo Rivera advocated for an illegal immigrant single-mother trying to fight deportation with the help of a Chicago church. The piece cast illegal immigration foes as almost heartless as Rivera asked Pat Buchanan: "Isn't it impossible almost, not to be sympathetic to this mom and her son?" and "Pat isn't it a kind of bait and switch? We lure the illegals here with the promise of work and now we're telling them, either leave or be arrested?"

Rivera noted the deportation stems from a 2002 arrest of her using a fake social security number but then tried to justify it by saying she paid the taxes: "One quick note about using a fake social security number. The tax is paid into the federal government but it's never paid out. So Elvira was paying taxes." Rivera then went further saying that some compare her "to Rosa Parks and other icons of the civil rights movement."

USA Today reported that gasoline prices could be closer to $2 a gallon by Thanksgiving. The paper sites the end of the summer driving season and decreased demand as causes for this predicted decline. Not surprisingly, CNN’s Jack Cafferty sees something more sinister at work here. Before his daily Cafferty File segment on ‘The Situation Room’ Wednesday afternoon, substitute anchor John King and news reader Zain Verjee discussed this report and cheered on lower gas prices as good news. Cafferty then spouted off the old liberal conspiracy theory connecting Republicans and Big Oil:

Jack Cafferty: "You know, if you were a real cynic, you could also wonder if the oil companies might not be pulling the price of gas down to help the Republicans get re-elected in the midterm elections a couple of months away."

Near the end of Tuesday's "World News with Charles Gibson," ABC's "A Closer Look" segment explored racial tensions in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Reporter Steve Osunsami recycled wild black conspiracy theories about how the levees were blown up in a racist plot, complete with Spike Lee soundbites and documentary footage. Whites were said to be delighted that Katrina would make the city much whiter. Lance Hill, the Tulane University professor ABC selected to describe white opinion, claims the government ordered no food and water be distributed to Katrina victims, and spurred local Holocaust-survivor outrage by comparing the government's Katrina response to Hitler's Holocaust. ABC didn't explain any of that.

This past Sunday on "60 Minutes," CBS correspondent Byron Pitts interviewed New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagin, about New Orleans’ recovery since hurricane Katrina. Pitts’ hit Nagin with statements full of hyperbole, claiming there are "few visible signs of recovery" in New Orleans, and that there is "tons of debris still scattered about," yet, Pitts offered little in the way of facts and figures to back up his claims. However, a anyone viewing Tuesday’s "NewsHour" on PBS would have heard hard facts that contradict Pitts’ gloomy assertions. For example, Pitts claimed:

"Today, in one of the few visible signs of recovery, the 220 miles of levees damaged by the storm have been repaired by the Army Corps of Engineers."

It really wasn't so long ago that the Times found it a question of vital importance exactly who told columnist Robert Novak that anti-war ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.

Now we know, thanks to "Hubris," a new book by Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff and left-wing writer David Corn of The Nation -- someone who bears much responsibility for puffing up the Plame non-story in the first place.

Times legal reporter Neil Lewis reports what everyone who has Internet access already knows -- that Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state under Colin Powell, was columnist Robert Novak's source for the information that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson/Plame, worked for the CIA.

On ABC's World News Tuesday night, a story on President Bush's day in New Orleans aggressively underlined the liberal theme that the response to Hurricane Katrina is a scandalous, indelible black mark on Bush's legacy. Reporter Martha Raddatz told viewers "the slow response was indeed a political disaster for the President, from which he is still trying to recover." Raddatz ended the story with an anecdote about a waitress joking to Bush that he wasn't going to turn his back on her, and Bush reportedly replied: "No, ma'am, not again."

Anchorman Charles Gibson began the segment, the second story after a general recounting of how New Orleanians commemorated the one-year anniversary, with a brief mention of responsibility at all levels of government. But as usual, ABC had no time for the Democratic mayor or governor and their failures, even as Raddatz highlighted the Democratic senator slamming the federal response. Gibson theorized:

There has been quite a bit of debate in the blogosphere surrounding this story (note: link has been deactivated) of several days ago:

An Israeli air strike hit a Reuters vehicle in Gaza City on Saturday, wounding two journalists as they covered a military incursion, doctors and residents said.

One of the Palestinian journalists, who worked for a local media organization, was seriously wounded. A cameraman working for Reuters was knocked unconscious in the air strike, one of several in the area.

Bush supporters who think that the MSM's sports pages might offer a respite from Bush-bashing should think again.  MSNBC managed to slip a sneak attack on the president into a seemingly innocuous article on the recent collapse of the Boston Red Sox.

Wrote MSNBC contributor Bob Cook, criticizing Sox General Manager Theo Epstein [pictured here]:

"Epstein might be better [sic] keeping his mouth shut for a while. His recent, unfoundedly optimistic pronouncements have him sounding like President Bush on Iraq."

Quite the seventh-inning stretch, there, Bob.

For those who were not watching Fox News Channel at 6:30am EDT today, 'Fox and Friends First' had a little bit of fun with CNN anchor Kyra Phillips’ restroom conversation, inadvertently broadcast live Tuesday during President Bush’s speech in New Orleans.

Making light of Phillips’ gaffe, anchor Kiran Chetry, having returned from a commercial break, was interrupted by an off-air "personal" conversation taking place between fellow F&F anchors Steve Doocy and Mike Jerrick.

The transcript of the F&F skit is behind the cut:

Search for yourself at Daily Kos and see (all searches are set up for 30 results per page and look back over quarter; searches were done at roughly 2:45 PM):

• "Bush" (to prove the search engine works) -- 558 results, up to and including today
• "Wilson" -- latest entry is August 24, well before the news exculpatory to the administration broke.
• "Plame" -- latest entry - August 11
• "Libby" -- latest - July 14
• "Fitzgerald" -- August 4
• "Fitzmas" -- June 24
• "Armitage" -- no results

No commentary necessary.

According to a new biography of Dan Rather, one longtime CBSer -- no, not Rather himself -- believes what most NewsBusters readers believe: that incoming CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric is in the tank for Hillary Clinton.

In his review of Alan Weisman's Lone Star, Dave Shiflett of Bloomberg News writes that

[f]ormer [CBS] congressional correspondent Phil Jones tells Weisman that Couric is "a liberal Democrat who is so in love with Hillary Clinton'' that it could pose a problem if Clinton runs for president.

We're left believing that Rather's critics will soon be pining for the good old days when straight-shooting Dan ruled the CBS roost.

Reports the New York Daily News:

CNN anchor Kyra Phillips was caught with her skirt down yesterday when she left her microphone on during a trip to the ladies room.

The mortifying episode came when Phillips stepped away from her desk during coverage of President Bush's Hurricane Katrina anniversary speech. Viewers saw Dubya's lips moving, but they heard Phillips pulling down a zipper and making girl talk with another woman in the rest room.

"I have the most handsome man," Phillips gushed. "Just a really passionate, great, great human being. And they exist! They are hard to find, but they are out there."

Phillips' sister-in-law didn't get such positive treatment.

Writing at TCS Daily, Glenn Reynolds wonders about the net effect of the exposure of the fact that fake news is more common than previously supposed:

In a democratic polity -- or even one that's driven by things like "world opinion" -- faked news poses a real threat to decent decision-making. Worse yet, the likely outcome of widespread fakery will be a tendency on the part of people to simply dismiss news that they don't want to hear. (And we already see enough of that phenomenon as it is). [...]

Once again, as I've said in previous columns, it boils down to whom you can trust. And although it seems that Big Media outfits, which want to make money and be around for the long term, would have a sufficient investment in their credibility not to fake news themselves, or to pass along fake news except in extraordinary circumstances, the evidence of recent weeks is that journalism is rife with fakery, and that we're seeing more of it now mostly because it's easier to spot now that lots of people can examine the evidence and compare notes. [...]

Context is key. And one of the lessons of these various affairs is that neither the photo, nor the purveyor of the photo, should be given unquestioned authority. Instead, we have to think for ourselves, and make up our own minds. Because it turns out that we can't trust, well, much of anyone.

He's right, of course. But realizing the need to think critically is only part of the solution. Despite the fact that a great many interactive web participants (bloggers, blog readers, and forum users) realize the value of not buying into everything you see, many do not. A still larger group aren't even reading blogs or forums, which presents a bit of a problem.

It's a crime in Austria to publicly praise the Nazis. Liberals in and out of the media would like to create a similar ban on anyone who questions the hype of global warming. Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam spotlighted MIT professor of meteorology, Richard Lindzen, who is the target of a smear campaign for daring to question the scare tactics of activists such as Al Gore.

I sat in a roomful of journalists 10 years ago while Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider lectured us on a big problem in our profession: soliciting opposing points of view. In the debate over climate change, Schneider said, there simply was no legitimate opposing view to the scientific consensus that man - made carbon emissions drive global warming. To suggest or report otherwise, he said, was irresponsible.

Indeed. I attended a week's worth of lectures on global warming at the Chautauqua Institution last month. Al Gore delivered the kickoff lecture, and, 10 years later, he reiterated Schneider's directive. There is no science on the other side, Gore inveighed, more than once. Again, the same message: If you hear tales of doubt, ignore them. They are simply untrue....

Stuart Taylor Jr. writes in Slate that the New York Times "still seems bent on advancing its race-sex-class ideological agenda, even at the cost of ruining the lives of three young men" from the Duke lacrosse team.

If you're the New York Times and the story is the alleged gang rape of a black woman by three white Duke lacrosse players—a claim shown by mounting evidence to be almost certainly fraudulent—you tone down your rhetoric while doing your utmost to prop up a case that's been almost wholly driven by prosecutorial and police misconduct.

And by bad journalism. Worse, perhaps, than the other recent Times embarrassments. The Times still seems bent on advancing its race-sex-class ideological agenda, even at the cost of ruining the lives of three young men who it has reason to know are very probably innocent. This at a time when many other true believers in the rape charge, such as feminist law professor Susan Estrich, have at last seen through the prosecution's fog of lies and distortions.