In praise of Al Gore

It looks like Al Gore finally did something on his own to fight Man-made Global Warming, instead of dumping more burdens on taxpayers, manufacturers and other producers. 

Go here for details. 

Good job, sir !!!

Keith Olbermann suspended for supporting political candidates. I'm not lying.

Olbermann has been suspended from his MSNBC anchor duties for a while because he was making financial contributions to political causes. 
Yeah, you read that correctly. 
Keith Olbermann contributes more to socialism by opening his mouth on TV than he could ever hope to contribute by giving money to politicians. 

Here's Rick Moran from Pajamas Media:

None of this is news to anyone who has a passing familiarity with political debate in America. Yet the rapidity with which MSNBC bounced Olbermann from the network begs several questions. What did he do that other journalists — including those at Fox News — haven’t done? Why now? And why should MSNBC all of a sudden feign an interest in impartiality?


Alas, Babylon. The press in America have never been “impartial,” and the grandiose proclamations of objectivity and neutrality in covering politics this last century made by sober-minded newspaper editors were always more for purposes of marketing than related to any claim based in reality. “Yellow journalism” aside, the great publishers in the 19th and early 20th century were all house organs for one of the two political parties. Major dailies were political kingmakers, and a word from a Horace Greeley or Robert McCormick could make or break a politician’s career.

What made this arrangement preferable to the insufferable hypocrisy we experience today with the media is that everybody knew which side the press was on. Being forewarned is being forearmed, and at a time when there were a dozen dailies in New York City alone, if you didn’t like Hearst’s take you could always read what the Sulzbergers had to say about politics. There was never a lack of choice as far as the news consumer being exposed to the spin from both parties.

Today, even little children know that MSNBC has a strong, pronounced liberal Democratic bias and a demonstrated animus against conservative Republicans. This is not a secret nor is it necessarily bad. If you don’t like the network’s tiresome promotion of Democratic candidates and causes, you can always switch over to Fox’s equally tiresome boosting of conservatives and the GOP.

And here's Jonah Goldberg:

Look, I understand why everyone is pouncing on Olby. And given his sanctimony and hypocrisy, not to mention the fact that he seems to have broken the clear rules of his own employer, I have no problem with him getting whipsawed.


But there are two problems with these kinds of journalistic ethics “scandals.”

The first is that they aren’t a scandal. So Olbermann gave money to some Democratic candidates. Ostensibly the rules against this are intended to prevent journalists from giving the appearance of bias. Whether or not such rules make sense for actual reporters, such rules are silly for someone like Olbermann. Does anybody, and I mean anybody, suddenly trust Olbermann’s opinion less because of this news? I’m waiting. Does anyone think he’s less biased? More biased? Un-biased?

Second, the larger problem with these kinds of rules is that they do little to prevent media bias and a great deal to hide an important form of evidence of it. Banning liberal journalists from giving money doesn’t prevent them from being liberal, it just gives them a bit more plausibility when they deny it. Now, I can see the argument that someone who makes a donation would be more interested in protecting their investment, as it were. So I don’t think the policy is completely misguided. But at a certain level banning donations is like NPR barring staff from attending the Jon Stewart rally. It doesn’t fool anyone, but gives the accused a lawyerly rebuttal to accurate accusations.

Precisely. 
When you sit down in front of a camera, behind a typewriter, or at a laptop to deliver consumable political opinions to large groups of people, you can pretend to be objective but you'll never pull it off. 
No one ever has. 
So let's drop the pretense, and put warning lables of "REPUBLICAN" on Faux News, "DEMOCRAT" on MSDNC, and "SLOWLY LEANING TOWARDS LIBERTARIAN, BUT NOT FAST ENOUGH" on Fox Business. 

This post was written by The Whited Sepulchre, who arrived at these opinions through painstaking research, academic training, reading a lot, common sense, and a vigorous editorial process designed to remove any hint of bias from these pages. 

Does anyone believe that?  Good. 
Don't believe it in reference to CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, or anyone else. 

A Semi-libertarian is elected to the U.S. Senate. MSNBC goes ballistic. Comedy Gold.

Here's the MSNBC election roundtable on Rand Paul's election to the Senate.
Hit it at the 7:30 mark.

Here's a Baltimore TV reviewer called Z On TV, on what you're about to see:
Some might call it an anchor desk, but I would not debase the word "anchor" by putting it in front of a desk that includes folks offering this kind of analysis. The team includes: Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell and Eugene Robinson.


This is their reaction Tuesday night to the victory speech of Rand Paul, the new U.S. senator from Kentucky. Check out O'Donnell's words, in particular, against MSNBC's claim that Fox News, not MSNBC, is the cable channel trafficking in fear. O'Donnell says Rand is now "empowered" to "creat a worldwide despression."

Yet another invitation for Keith Olbermann to attend a Tea Party protest

It looks like everyone with a camera is now inviting MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to their Tea Party....

Why I love watching Keith Olbermann

I was telling a friend of mine the other day about discovering the wonderful world of MSNBC, but I couldn't really explain why I'm drawn to that network.  It's like looking in on a sophisticated culture that developed without ever discovering the wheel.  Nestled in there next door to FOX Business, it's like a sitcom about Amish farming families trying to make it in Manhattan.  MSNBC is like a space shuttle staffed by The Flat Earth Society.  They don't, or can't, acknowledge the world that the rest of us live in.
 
This is why I LOVE watching Keith Olbermann.
In a recent rant about the Tea Party/9-12 movements, Olbermann says "Let me ask all of you who attend these things, how many black faces do you see at these events? How many hispanics? Asians, gays? Where are these people? Surely there must be blacks who think they're being bled by taxation. Surely there must be hispanics who think we should have let the auto industry fail...."
And he goes on and on and on in that vein.  
I don't know who the guy is that vandalized this video of Olbermann's rant, but he did a heck of a job. 



Well, Mr. Olbermann, you can go here and check out the pictures from my post about Fort Worth's 9-12 rally.  Hispanics, if memory serves, were possibly over-represented.  African-Americans were probably under-represented, especially women, but the men were there in fairly large numbers.  (Mostly older guys, ex-military, and wearing their camo/caps/etc. with insignia to designate their branch of service.) 

And please indulge me for indulging in this stereotype: I've NEVER seen Asians at these events, probably because they're too busy working.  You can go here to see that the Asian vote is almost evenly split between Republicrats and Demoblicans.  So far, they've resisted left-wing victimization programs.

I didn't take these pictures with the goal of filling racial quotas, as Olbermann seem to advocate, but the random sampling I posted kinda indicates that the 9-12 rally was a lot more diverse than (ahem) Mr. Olbermann's employer.

If anyone is interested, here are some interesting videos from Dallas Pastor Stephen Broden, speaking at the 9-12 event.  Do I agree with everything Pastor Broden says?  No, and I don't have to.   Do I like listening to him?  Yeah. 
Those of us who have united against The Teleprompter Jesus have something that MS-DNC seems to lack.
It's called "diversity". 


Maybe Keith Olbermann just needs to get out more and get a clue about what he's reporting.  That might help. 


Yet another coat of Whitening goes to Ed Driscoll for the first video link.

Update from 2-20-10....BUT WAIT ! ! !   There's more ! ! !    Where is all this video coming from that doesn't fit the preferred narrative ? 

Are pickup trucks racist? A Socratic Dialogue between Keith Olbermann and Newsweek's Howard Fineman

FINEMAN: Maybe not in Massachusetts, but maybe in some places, there are codes, there are images, ah, you know, there are pickup trucks, uh, you could say there was a racial aspect to it one way or another.
OLBERMANN: What were the Scott Brown ads, though? Every one of the Scott Brown ads had him in a pickup truck.
FINEMAN: That’s why I mentioned pickup trucks. I mean, my mind goes back to Fred Thompson down in Tennessee.

A coat of Whitening to Hot Air for the transcript on this one. I'm new to Keith Olbermann. I get almost all of my news from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Real Clear Politics, and Instapundit. (Along with a range of weekly reads from The Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, etc., just to try to understand the mindset.)

It wasn't until I watched some MSNBC coverage of the recent Massachusetts election that I saw Olbermann and Rachel Maddow in action. I was amazed. Seriously. I couldn't believe it. Every statement from the left was taken at face value. Every now and then Chris Matthews would try to bring in a comment from the world of reality, and he usually failed.

I'll admit it: I watched MSNBC for a while last night. It's like discovering a fairly sophisticated world where they haven't invented the wheel yet.

I might as well sound off on this one, since everyone else already has. This is from the Huffington Post:

On Monday, Olbermann described Brown as "an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees." Later on, Olberman added "sexist" to his list of accusations against Brown.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Let me address these one at a time. The "tea-bagger" line is in itself a homophobic slur. So to call someone a "homophobic" "tea-bagger" tells us as much about the accuser as the accused. It's like being dumb enough to call someone a "Bigoted Wetback".

"Irresponsible"? I don't see it. Brown once cussed at a high school assembly, and stated that one of his daughters was "available". I used to cuss at high school assemblies. I have a daughter roughly the same age as Brown's. If there's a young man out there who wants to take over her tuition at A&M, I can put in a good word for you.

"Racist"? He questioned Obama's parentage. That doesn't make him a racist.

"Reactionary"? We're up to 12 trillion in debt. He got elected BECAUSE he was reactionary. Please hurry up and understand this.

"Ex Nude Model"? Yeah, Scott Brown took off his clothes for Cosmo. And your point is? He'll soon be whoring for the Republicans. That's the usual career path in the political prostitution industry, isn't it?

"Sexist"? and "Supporter of Violence Against Women"? Someone in the Ted Kennedy seat could be sexist and a supporter of violence against women?