They want a message?

Here it is.

Update: Here is the transcript (via Bryan of Why Now?)

From WWI to Keith....

WWI mines and miners and the battle that cost them their lives.

Archaeologists are beginning the most detailed ever study of a Western Front battlefield, an untouched site where 28 British tunnellers lie entombed after dying during brutal underground warfare. For WWI historians, it's the "holy grail".

When military historian Jeremy Banning stepped on to a patch of rough scrubland in northern France four months ago, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

The privately owned land in the sleepy rural village of La Boisselle had been practically untouched since fighting ceased in 1918, remaining one of the most poignant sites of the Battle of the Somme.

In his hand was a selection of grainy photographs of some of the British tunnellers killed in bloody subterranean battles there, and who lay permanently entombed directly under his feet.

Um... run away? Massive Plasma Waves Sweep the Sun --NASA: "We're seeing things we've never seen before"

Go the Fuck to Sleep. A children's story.

Fukushima suffered a melt-through. Worse than anyone thought. And the mutations begin.

Alabama steps on women's rights. And passes the most draconian immigration law. Alabama, the black hole of compassion and empathy.

The utter stupidity of some criminals.

Keith Olbermann to Talking Points Memo consumers:

Blog sprinkles

It's the end of the world!!! Sell everything and meet me on the mountain top in your best bed sheets!

Dear Human...

Trying to escape Chernobyl and failing...

Uh oh... Mongolia is the new frontier for mining...

Making passports almost impossible to get?

Only 4 shrimp a week? Who the hell eats only 4 shrimp at a sitting? Seafood from the Gulf has oil. And dispersants. And chemicals. Which are not going away any time soon.

Sneaking about the closed Post Office Railway in London.

Do not piss this woman off:

Mysterious Vesta.

Help Greenpeace sort through the BP documents.

Countdown with Keith Olbermann starts June 20th:

Pictures of alternate energy.

We knew this was going to happen...

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

Is this why Keith Olbermann is on vacation?

Glenn Greenwald:
GE's silencing of Olbermann and MSNBC's sleazy use of Richard Wolffe

Update: Keith Olbermann:

MSNBC President Phil Griffin has reportedly told network producers to “restrain from criticizing Fox directly,” and Fox staffers were told to “be fair” to General Electric, MSNBC’s parent company. Olbermann said that he personally was “party to no deal.”

When rightwing blowhards think all the armed crazies are on their side

They'll say anything hoping for an 'unfortunate incident' for which they will obviously be blameless.

Michael (Weiner) Savage (did you know this guy once hung out with Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg?!!):

Earlier this week on his radio show, Michael Savage vowed to post pictures and other ‘pertinent information’ about the staff of watchdog group Media Matters for America. In a statement during his radio show today he appeared to back off, saying only that an unidentified person was researching publicly available information such as the group’s tax filings. Non-profit organizations must file IRS form 990 and are available for public inspection.

Apparently his call for right wing talkers and fellow travelers to rise up against this media watchdog was met with a resounding silence. His attempt to push back and silence his critics appears to be a failure. It is difficult for Savage to push back against reporting that includes recordings of his own words.

Ann Coulter: Don't shoot an abortionist if you really really don't want to....



Keith Olbermann's response to Ann Coulter:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Spocko of Spocko's Brain hoists the rightwingers on their own petard.

Blog sprinkles

When you really really want to have a digger toy that works.

Economic downturns force people to make cheaper cuts of beef taste delicious.

Oh, SHUT UP. Who the fuck cares what you feeling right now, Georgie? We're still digging out from the wreckage you caused during your eight horribly long years in office.

Bibles burned in Afghanistan ... by our military. Where are the frothing writhing religious wingnuts on this?:

The US army in Afghanistan has burned Bibles printed in local languages, a US colonel in Afghanistan has said, amid concerns they could have been used to try to convert Afghans.

"My understanding is that the [military] leadership confiscated these Bibles so that they could not be distributed around Afghanistan," Colonel Greg Julian told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

"It was their best judgement at the time, that the best way to deal with it, was to destroy them and I understand that they were burnt."

Al Jazeera broadcast footage earlier this month showing troops apparently discussing how best to convert Afghans to their faith.

How very odd: Gasoline prices swing higher before holiday. Who could have predicted this?!

Obama and Cheney at 40 paces:



Keith Olbermann's special comment:



The party that loves America so much that they'd never do anything to hurt it for partisan reasons?

The NRSC has just plowed another $750,000 into Coleman’s recount effort, raising questions about whether GOP donors are funding an effort they know is doomed merely to keep the seat empty as long as possible.

Asked about this, Van Dongen said the goal was to put Coleman in the seat, but added: “Is it better empty than in Franken’s hands? Hell, yeah.”

The horrors of a 'preventive-detention law'. President Obama, are you actually considering this?

Tacitly inciting lunatics to violence

What do we really know about Senator John Sydney McCain III? I mean REALLY?

Friday Cat Blogging

Keith Olbermann was much too polite. I would have worded it just a bit differently...

Giving up golf really really hurts, you know.

Update: Michael of Cannablog offers this response:

Keith

Keith Olbermann blogged

Andthe servers nearly melted with the response.

How real journalists talk to each other

And actually listen.

Bill Moyers and Keith Olbermann.

You, sir, have no business being president.

Thank you, Keith Olbermann!

Politicizing the military

(Via whig at Cannablog):

One hell of a play date....

And consider again how this President has spoken to that biographer: that he is “playing for October-November.” The goal in Iraq is “To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence” and consider how this revelation contradicts every other rationale he has offered in these last 500 days.

In the context of all that… now, consider… these next 500 days.

Mr. Bush, our presence in Iraq must end.

Even if it means your resignation.

Even if it means your impeachment.

Even if it means a different Republican to serve out your term.

Even if it means a Democratic Congress — and those true Patriots among the Republicans — standing up and denying you another penny for Iraq, other than for the safety and the safe conduct home of our troops.

This country cannot run the risk of what you can still do to this country in the next 500 days…

Not while you, sir… are playing.

This is YOUR war, Mr. Bush.

(Found via whig at Cannablog).

J'accuse!

Update 7/4: finally found a YouTube that isn't oddly cut off at the end:



Olbermann on fire:

This President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but instead to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of you becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

Update 7/4: Via Firedoglake, windspike of Educational Whisper has a wonder breakdown of the grilling of Tony Snow over the Deciderer's decision.

Why political appointees are bad for government

And bad for us: (my bold)

On Monday Keith Olberman interviewed Michael Boyd an Aviation Security Consultant regarding the JFK terror plot. Boyd characterized the plot as "just nuts" but he focused primarily on the point of political appointees running national security agencies and the effects of that now. Here are some of his comments beginning with the effect on the economy if the fuel supply to 5 or 6 airports were to be disrupted.....

They didn‘t even focus on that. They focused as if somehow or other, this would be one giant incendiary event. And what that says is, very clearly, these are not real security people. I mean, the terrorists they caught, supposedly, were not black belts in terrorism. And these guys aren‘t black belts in counterterrorism either.

Then...

Well, the problem is, our security—Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration is not run by security professionals. It‘s run by political appointees. And political appointees look to cover themselves and to look good rather than to do the job. And that‘s why we‘re no safer than we were on 9/11, because we have the same problems we‘ve always had.

Keith Olbermann takes the Democrats to the woodshed

Which is better than the tarring and feathers we had planned.

Update: It's been YouTubed:

Keith Olbermann: (watch the video at this link or this one.)

A Special Comment about the Democrats’ deal with President Bush to continue financing this unspeakable war in Iraq—and to do so on his terms:

This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.

Few men or women elected in our history—whether executive or legislative, state or national—have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear:

Get us out of Iraq.

Yet after six months of preparation and execution—half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:

The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president—if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history—who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”;

The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans;

The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.

You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.
You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”
Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning... is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.
Because this “first step”… is a step right off a cliff.

And this President!
How shameful it would be to watch an adult... hold his breath, and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue.
But how horrifying it is… to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm’s way, are bled white.
You lead this country, sir?
You claim to defend it?
And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your stubbornness—your stubbornness which has cost 3,431 Americans their lives and thousands more their limbs—you, Mr. Bush, imply that if the Democrats don’t give you the money and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in Iraq will be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets at the enemy with their bare hands.
How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic.
Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally—first, last and always—that the troops would not suffer.
A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he has already, not to manipulate an overlap of arriving and departing Brigades into a ‘second surge,’ but to say in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the monies already allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will make sure the troops are safe—even if the only safety to be found, is in getting them the hell out of there.
Well, any true President would have done that, Sir.
You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so.

Not that these Democrats, who had this country’s support and sympathy up until 48 hours ago, have not since earned all the blame they can carry home.

“We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame,” Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. “My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a little later…”

That’s what this is for the Democrats, isn’t it?

Their “Neville Chamberlain moment” before the Second World War.
All that’s missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee “peace in our time,” but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.
The Democrats have merely streamlined the process.
Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.

And where are the Democratic presidential hopefuls this evening?
See they not, that to which the Senate and House leadership has blinded itself?

Judging these candidates based on how they voted on the original Iraq authorization, or waiting for apologies for those votes, is ancient history now.

The Democratic nomination is likely to be decided... tomorrow.
The talk of practical politics, the buying into of the President’s dishonest construction “fund-the-troops-or-they-will-be-in-jeopardy,” the promise of tougher action in September, is falling not on deaf ears, but rather falling on Americans who already told you what to do, and now perceive your ears as closed to practical politics.
Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to—for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops—denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.

For, ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has failed us.

Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the other Democrats... have failed us.
They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as the citizens of this country, that this brazen War of Lies be ended as rapidly and safely as possible.

Mr. Bush and his government... have failed us.
They have behaved venomously and without dignity—of course.
That is all at which Mr. Bush is gifted.
We are the ones providing any element of surprise or shock here.

With the exception of Senator Dodd and Senator Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidates have (so far at least) failed us.

They must now speak, and make plain how they view what has been given away to Mr. Bush, and what is yet to be given away tomorrow, and in the thousand tomorrows to come.

Because for the next fourteen months, the Democratic nominating process—indeed the whole of our political discourse until further notice—has, with the stroke of a cursed pen, become about one thing, and one thing alone.
The electorate figured this out, six months ago.
The President and the Republicans have not—doubtless will not.
The Democrats will figure it out, during the Memorial Day recess, when they go home and many of those who elected them will politely suggest they stay there—and permanently.
Because, on the subject of Iraq...
The people have been ahead of the media....
Ahead of the government...
Ahead of the politicians...
For the last year, or two years, or maybe three.

Our politics... is now about the answer to one briefly-worded question.
Mr. Bush has failed.
Mr. Warner has failed.
Mr. Reid has failed.
So.
Who among us will stop this war—this War of Lies?
To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation.
To all the others—presidents and majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party—there is only blame… for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.