Countdown

"Think of a caged rat, a cornered rat. What does a cornered rat do? It instinctively goes for the jugular. That's where the media are going right now," following the November 2 elections, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Ernest Istook in a radio interview.

The  Media Research Center founder appeared by telephone on the November 11 edition of Bill Bennett's Morning in America, where Istook was substitute hosting.

[Link to audio below page break]

  Since Republicans won control of the House of Representatives last week, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann has recited at the end of his Countdown show a new sign-off each night he has hosted noting the number of days since the GOP victory and mocking Speaker-designate John Boehner by sarcastically asking, "Where are the jobs?" At the end of Wednesday’s Countdown, he ended the show: "That's November 10th, seven days since the Republicans took control of the House. Mr. Boehner, where are the jobs? I'm Keith Olbermann. Good night and good luck."

 Back in February 2006, Olbermann began mocking President Bush by ending his show with the number of days since Bush’s speech on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln declaring an end to major combat operations in Iraq - referred to by Olbermann as declaring "mission accomplished." Last May, after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill had lasted more than a month, the MSNBC host temporarily stopped referring to "mission accomplished" in Iraq as he turned his attention to the number of days since the oil spill occurred, but he soon brought back the reference to Iraq and added Afghanistan into the mix. Wednesday, October 20, was the last day Olbermann used this version of the sign off:

That’s October 20th. It’s the 2,729th day since President Bush declared mission accomplished in Iraq, the 2,318th day since he declared victory in Afghanistan, and the 184th day of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf. I’m Keith Olbermann, leave a message after the beep. Good night and good luck.

Keith Olbermann on Tuesday almost dislocated his shoulder patting himself on the back for all the attention he got after being suspended by NBC last Friday.

Like a kindergartner bragging to his parents about the fabulous day he had in school, the "Countdown" host told his viewers how many people signed a petition for his return, the number of tweets he received, and the various television programs that wanted to interview him (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Hill is reporting that America's only admitted socialist member of Congress on Tuesday said he would seek to block the merger of Comcast with NBC as a result of Keith Olbermann's suspension last week (h/t NBer Beukeboom):

Keith Olbermann on Monday issued a brief written statement to his viewers concerning his recent two-day suspension for violating NBC's policy regarding political contributions.

As NewsBusters readers likely suspect, the man with the largest ego on television is playing this episode for all it's worth (h/t Hot Air):

It appears NBC management feels a two day suspension is all Keith Olbermann should get for violating company policy regarding political donations.

MSNBC's Phil Griffin issued the following press release moments ago (h/t NB reader Keith Hanson):

The Baltimore Sun's media critic is still fuming about MSNBC's pathetic coverage on election night.

In his piece published Saturday, David Zurawik called the cable news network a "liberal prep school" while claiming the behavior of folks like Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Keith Olbermann was "so egregious" that the "entire realm of TV journalism was diminished in the public mind":

Would you seek advice on how to save your marriage from John Edwards? Or how about a teenage girl turning to Paris Hilton for suggestions on how to maintain her purity? If you think those ideas seem silly then take a look at what the recently suspended MSNBC Countdown host is claiming in a New York Times Q&A interview conducted by Deborah Solomon. Keith Olbermann is asserting that Vice President Joe Biden asked him for anger management advice. I kid you not. Here is the perpetually outraged Olbermann making his claim:

Is it fair to describe you as the first left winger to express anger as a television host? Fury used to be the province of right wingers, until that day in 2006 when you delivered a tirade against Donald Rumsfeld.

I once had a conversation with the man who is now the vice president when he was still in the Senate, who asked me for advice about how to turn anger into righteous inspiration.

Joe Biden took you to lunch to ask you for tips on getting angry?

He said, ‘‘I just come across like I’m angry and out of control, and you seem to focus it and make it look useful and expressive.’’

Rachel Maddow's claim that MSNBC is "not a political operation" was thoroughly debunked Sunday by the conservative website Johnny Dollar's Place.

As NewsBusters previously reported, Maddow on Friday defended Keith Olbermann's suspension for violating NBC's campaign finance rules by attacking Fox News hosts for raising money for Republicans. In the segment, she argued that aside from the "Countdown" host's indiscretion, MSNBCers don't engage in such activity.

As the following video marvelously demonstrates, Democrat candidates in recent months went on MSNBC programs such as "Hardball," "The Ed Show," "Countdown," and "The Rachel Maddow Show" to raise money for themselves (video follows with commentary):

Are they not properly vetting their liberals over at MSNBC?

As NewsBuster Lachlan Markay reported on Friday:

MSNBC suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely … after news broke that he had given the maximum allowable contribution to three Democrats without disclosing it to his employers.

With Olbermann out, MSNBC needed a fill-in, so in steps Chris Hayes, editor of the liberal magazine, The Nation.  MSNBC pegged Hayes to fill in for the suspended Countdown host on Friday.  His gig was short-lived however.

Several hours after the announcement, Hayes had been dropped.  (h/t Weasel Zippers)

Why?

For a series of donations to Democratic campaigns in recent years.

Did MSNBC suspend Keith Olbermann because he refused to apologize for his campaign finance activities on camera?

That's what Politico's Mike Allen is reporting Sunday (h/t Mediaite):

The same day an MSNBC host admitted to being a socialist on national television, America's only openly socialist member of Congress came out in defense of Keith Olbermann after the "Countdown" host was suspended indefinitely for violating NBC's campaign finance rules.

If you needed any more proof of just how far to the left this so-called news network is, you should look no further than what Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) published at the Huffington Post Friday:

Editor's Note: MRC President Brent Bozell issued the following statement in reaction to news that MSNBC had suspended Countdown host Keith Olbermann "indefinitely" for donating to three Democratic candidates in violation of NBC's policy. In October, Olbermann had blasted political donations from Fox News owner News Corp, slamming Fox as "a media outlet that has now put its money where everybody has known its mouth has always been."

Keith Olbermann is officially the Worst Hypocrite in the World. He rails about a ‘national cable news outlet’ that ‘starts to donate to partisan groups of one party,’ then does exactly that.

But it begs a bigger questions: why did it take NBC so long? This man has been using his perch as a newsman at MSNBC to promote a radical left-wing and hate-filled agenda for years. And they fire him over three contributions? NBC needs to review its own policies.”

(Video below page break)

Updates abound. Check below the fold for much, much more.

MSNBC suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely today after news broke that he had given the maximum allowable contribution to three Democrats without disclosing it to his viewers.

CBS News reported on the suspension about 20 minutes ago, with a more detailed statement from MSNBC brass:

"I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night," Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC, said in a statement. "Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay."

 On Thursday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, as he plugged a segment on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s appeal to President Obama to cooperate with the GOP, host Keith Olbermann suggested that Obama should "kick" the "ass" of McConnell rather than surrender to the Republican Senator’s demands. Referring to McConnell during a plug, Olbermann complained: "Once again, he honestly explains what compromise means: agreeing with him. And instead of kicking him in the ass, the President agrees to sit down and chat."

After a few more plugs in which the Countdown host mocked McConnell for asking Obama to move in the Republican direction on issues, Olbermann got to the segment and played a clip of the Senate Republican Leader speaking to the conservative Heritage Foundation. After bringing aboard the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman, the MSNBC host held his hands over his head and began the discussion: "Forgive me. I have to deal with this headache immediately, so I'm doing this right at the moment."

He soon asked Fineman if President Obama would ever realize that trying to compromise with Republicans "hasn’t gotten me a lick of spit" and give up:

Keith Olbermann has become very upset lately at people who claim MSNBC and Fox News are two sides of the same coin - ideological cable news counterparts. Olbermann is right to object to that characterization, but not for the reason he thinks.

Unlike his 8 pm Fox News competitor Bill O'Reilly, Olbermann prefers not to have dissenting voices on his show. According to Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky, Olbermann did not host a single conservative on "Countdown" last week. O'Reilly, meanwhile, brought 11 liberals on his show.

When MSNBC’s Chris Matthews starts to rationalize the American electorate’s temperate, get out of the way.

On MSNBC’s Nov. 2 election coverage, “Hardball” host Chris Matthews offered his assessment of how the Democrats and President Barack Obama found themselves in such dire straits. He said it started with the left’s favorite boogeyman of the past, President George W. Bush.

Video Below Fold

  On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, CNN host Howard Kurtz pressed guest Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post on her hypocrisy for calling for more civility in political discourse even while she is a regular guest on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown show on MSNBC. After Kurtz asked if MSNBC was as much of a problem as FNC, she charged that "misinformation" disseminated by FNC is "monumental" compared to MSNBC:

Definitely not as much of the problem. Have they exaggerated? Yes, they would admit it themselves. But the constant barrage of misinformation being put out by Glenn Beck, by O'Reilly, by Hannity is just monumental. I mean, this is a factual record that has been compiled of what they're saying.

She also rationalized her appearances with Olbermann by giving him credit for a lame apology the MSNBC host once addressed to Jon Stewart after Stewart called him out for viciously attacking Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts. Huffington: "Well, Keith Olbermann actually apologized for that statement, for that particular statement. Have you ever seen anybody apologize except maybe Glenn Beck when he called the President a racist?"

 On Wednesday’s Countdown show, during a 21-minute "Special Comment," MSNBC host Keith Olbermann warned American voters against electing Tea Party Republicans to power, whom he suggested are "unqualified, unstable individuals" who will take America "backward to Jim Crow, or backward to the breadlines of the ‘30s, or backward to hanging union organizers." He then made a play off MSNBC’s "Lean Forward" slogan to disparage the Tea Party movement as he declared: "Vote backward, vote Tea Party."

After reading a list of controversial quotes and policy positions he disagreed with that have been spoken by a list of Tea Party-backed Republican candidates, whom he referred to as "cranks, menaces, mercenaries and authoritarians," he went on to suggest that the Tea Party movement is a greater threat than America’s foreign enemies, and preemptively blamed those who would vote for these candidates as having "enabled" a "cataclysm": "If you sit there next Tuesday, if you sit there tomorrow, and the rest of this week, and you let this cataclysm unfold, you have enabled this. It is one thing to be attacked by those who would destroy America from without. It is a worse thing to be attacked by those who would destroy America from within."

 Appearing as a guest on Tuesday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman – formerly of Newsweek – joined substitute host Cenk Uygur in mocking Delaware Republican Senate nominee and the Tea Party as Uygur discussed O’Donnell’s recent comments about the words "separation of church and state" not being in the Consititution. After Uygur asked if the views of the Delaware Republican "speak poorly of the people who elected her, namely the Tea Party voters," Fineman agreed with Uygur’s negative view of the Tea Party and went on to trash Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle as he contended that O’Donnell "makes Sharron Angle look like Doris Kearns Goodwin." Fineman:

Yeah, it probably doesn’t help the Tea Party at all. I mean, I suppose you could argue that having Christine O’Donnell around and speaking the way she did today makes Sharron Angle look like Doris Kearns Goodwin or something. But it, you know, that’s the only way she might be useful as a point of contrast. And what’s really killing here, what’s damning here is that the Tea Party is run in the name of rights and freedom. And all of those rights and freedoms are enshrined in the very amendments that she seems totally ignorant of.

Fineman also made no mention of the legitimate debate over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and whether the children of illegal immigrants born in America should be considered natural-born American citizens as he mocked conservatives over the Fourteenth Amendment: "And, you know, they’re some of the amendments that they’re also questioning right now because the Fourteenth Amendment basically says that everyone here who’s born here, naturalized here, is a citizen of the United States, and their rights cannot be abridged by any of the states. And yet, the sort of local orientation of the Tea Party, you heard Christine O’Donnell talk about local option. what the local people want to do. You know, that’s something that is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment."

 On Monday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann mocked Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, tagging her as "Worst Person in the World," for her recent declaration in an interview with World Net Daily that she would like to dine with Jesus Christ, Ann Coulter and a number of other historical and public figures. In addition to cracking that Coulter would accuse Jesus of being gay and that conservative talk radio host Mark Levin would "run out on the check," the MSNBC host concluded that Jesus would try to stop Bachmann and presumably other conservatives from "mak[ing] the House of Representatives a house of morons."

Olbermann: "Coulter would question Jesus’s sexuality. Levin would run out on the check. And Jesus would shout, "Get these out of here. Do not make the House of Representatives a house of morons," and then turn over the table. You know, like in the Real Housewives of New Jersey."

The Countdown host went on to mock the conservative concept of adhering to the original intent of the Constitution as meaning slavery would be legal and that women would not have the right to vote. Olbermann:

 On Friday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann called FNC host Brian Kilmeade an "un-American bastard" during his show’s regular "Worst Person" segment because Kilmeade recently complained about the political correctness of the left's desire to avoid identifying Muslim terrorists as Muslims.

Picking up on comments Kilmeade made on Fox News Radio in which he overstated the reality that an overwhelming majority of terrorists are Muslims as Kilmeade asserted that "all" terrorists are Muslims, Olbermann went ballistic in attacking the FNC host. Olbermann: "Not every un-American bastard is Brian Kilmeade, but all Brian Kilmeades are un-American bastards and tonight's ‘Worst Person in the World.’"

Liberals are so angry that conservatives are outspending them this election cycle, the president, MSNBC and left-wing bloggers have resorted to attacks on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Liberal website Think Progress, an arm of the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, claimed that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was soliciting foreign money and using it for political attack ads here in the United States. It’s a serious charge since it is illegal to spend foreign money on domestic elections, yet the left-wing group offered no evidence to support the charge.

Lee Fang of Think Progress appeared on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” to present those allegations, but instead of supplying proof of wrongdoing Fang claimed the Chamber should prove their innocence. “They haven’t proved that there’s some firewall [for foreign funds]. They’re just saying, hey, trust us,” Fang said.

Olbermann ate up those claims, repeating them as fact and bashing the Chamber on multiple nights of his program. He even called the group “something like the Manchurian Chamber of Commerce” on Oct. 8.

CNN's Rick Sanchez positioned himself above the fray between "right wing" Fox News and "liberal" MSNBC on Thursday's Rick's List. Sanchez named Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and their network to his "List U Don't Want 2 Be On," after the Obama administration supposedly exposed his competitor's left wing bias, and claimed that he "wasn't necessarily liked" by the current or previous administrations.

Before putting his colleagues at MSNBC on his "list," the CNN anchor invoked his longtime vendetta against his other competitor and took a swipe at the last vice president: "Much was made of Vice President Cheney's insistence- remember this?- on only watching Fox News in his travels. It's a true story. Whenever he checked into hotels, he would have his staffers tune all of the TVs in the hotel to only Fox News, so he could just hear about his policies, repeated back to him by a right-wing television network."

Sanchez then moved on to his main subject: "Well, today I asked this question: what about MSNBC and their relationship now with this White House? Here's 'The List U Don't Want 2 Be On.'" He continued with the claim that "if you don't think for one minute that MSNBC is to Barack Obama what Fox was to Bush and Cheney, then you obviously haven't heard this comment that I'm about to share with you- this comment from Deputy White House [Press] Secretary Bill Burton."

CNN's John King on Wednesday mocked Barack Obama for calling Fox News a "destructive" force in our society while at practically the same time a White House spokesman was saying MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow provide "an invaluable service" to the country.

As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, the President bashed FNC in a just-published interview with Rolling Stone magazine shortly before his Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton was praising MSNBC during a gaggle held on Air Force One.

With this in mind, on Wednesday's "John King USA," the host surprisingly derided the White House's inconsistency (video follows with partial transcript and commentary): 

Gee, I wonder which "cable news show" Joe had in mind . . .

In a seeming shot at Keith Olbermann, Joe Scarborough has predicted that "certain cable news shows" will stir up a "fake controversy" tonight over whether Sarah Palin was booed on Dancing With The Stars [she wasn't].

Here's the background: Bristol Palin performed on DWTS last night, and Sarah was there in the front row to support her.  Jennifer Grey [of Dirty Dancing fame] also competed last night.  Her backers in the audience began to boo when her scores, which they judged to be too low, were announced. That happened just before the show cut to an interview with Sarah Palin.  Some have tried to suggest that the audience was booing Palin.  But the crowd in fact cheered when Sarah appeared, and as Willie Geist said "my staff and I have studied the tape.  They were not booing [Palin]."

That served as preamble to Joe's prediction . . .

An organization once headed by former Obama administration official Van Jones tried it. Other so-called grassroots organizations have given it a shot. Now Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., with the power of Congress in tow, has taken his best shot to shut Glenn Beck down. But so far it isn’t really working.

On Sept. 23, Weiner called a representative from Santa Monica, Calif.-based Goldline to testify before the Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee about what he deemed to be the firm's unfair business practices. However, it just so happens that Goldline sponsors Beck and other conservative media personalities.

With congressional hearings, you'd expect the media to be all over this, right? Not exactly, at least thus far. The most attention Weiner’s charade could muster was a segment at the end of MSNBC’s bomb-thrower show, “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.” Olbermann asked Weiner on his Sept. 23 broadcast if Goldline was in cahoots with “willing partners like Glenn Beck,” since anyone who suggests gold be a part of someone’s portfolio is up to no good.