We Seriously Need A Better Quality of Protester

File under Tea Party Protester Envy.


Ann Coulter wrote a devastating column in which she was 100% correct. Colter wrote (in part):

"I am not the first to note the vast differences between the Wall Street protesters and the tea partiers. To name three: The tea partiers have jobs, showers and a point."

"Tea partiers didn't block traffic, sleep on sidewalks, wear ski masks, fight with the police or urinate in public. They read the Constitution, made serious policy arguments, and petitioned the government against Obama's unconstitutional big government policies, especially the stimulus bill and Obamacare." 

"Then they picked up their own trash and quietly went home. Apparently, a lot of them had to be at work in the morning."

Damn but Coulter is right. The Tea Party folks had literally hundreds of individual protests and involved hundreds of thousands of protesters with virtually no arrests, no destruction of property and organization and cleanliness that was stunning.  Most parks, streets and protest venues were left cleaner than before the protests began.


The Occupy Wall Street protests are now limping across America, but have no logic, no intelligent commentary and virtually no point. But there are plenty of arrests and tons of garbage and filth.

Videos abound showing the tragically uninformed protesting the banks and bankers, the wealthy and super rich and the high price of broccoli. Demands include, but are not limited to forgiveness of all debt, especially student loans and all mortgages, guaranteed jobs for everyone at high wages, and that all retirees can vacation in Cancun (no joke).




Some rally around President Obama, others call him a traitor. Many call for the overthrow of the government and the abolition of capitalism.


What's even more frightening is how many Democrat politicians and pundits have endorsed their cause, what ever-the-hell that might or might not be. Even President Obama and Vice President Biden have added their voice of support. Nancy Pelosi, who we must remember was terrified of the law abiding Tea Partiers, Has heartily endorsed the Occupy Wall Street Crowd and many other Dems have given them moral support.

Keith Olbermann is their biggest and most visible supporter. I guess he's praying he can become to the Occupy Wall Street crowd what Glenn Beck was to the Tea Partiers and ride the movement to giant protests and a television special on the capital mall. The problem is Olbermann has to carefully chose his interviews and generally supply meaning and message when none is actually there. If only the entire rest of the national media had stayed away and hadn't reported the truth about the protests. Alas, Olbermann look more like an idiot with each passing day.


The final insult is that, in order to move the protests nationwide, politicians and union members have had to print up signs and then pay illegal immigrants and out of work union members to carry the signs.  Many of the pseudo-protesters do not speak English and have no idea what the signs even say.

MSNBC Suspends Keith Olbermann Indefinitely

In what has to be the most stunning move in recent media history, MSNBC has suddenly suspended its only major star, Keith Olbermann for making financial contributions to three Democratic Party campaigns.

Phil Griffin, president of the MSNBC, said he “became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”

Whoa!!!

What is ironic is that Olbermann isn't financially capable of making a monetary contribution even remotely worth the value of his on-air shilling every night for progressive candidates. An endorsement from Keith was worth a fortune in motivating the Democratic base.

What's even more ironic is that MSNBC had no problem allowing the completely biased, partisan and fact-challenged Olbermann anchor their election night coverage. Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell and Ed Schultz turned the election night coverage into a joke, a pathetic frat boy party of snickering, mockery and revelry. There was literally not 30 seconds of journalism all Tuesday night from the crew who ran the coverage like it was an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 rather than a news event of historic proportions.

Phil Griffin himself should have been suspended without pay for allowing the once proud Peacock Network to fall to these lows.

It really makes me wonder why they would even bother to have a no financial political contribution policy.

Progressives Know HOW to Protest, Just NOT How to Recognize Protest

The fact that I am blogging less doesn't mean for one minute that I haven't been thoroughly embarrassed and even humiliated by the bizarre hyperbole and over reaching excess of my fellow liberals and the so-called progressives in their completely unwarranted attacks on the Tea Party Protesters. What a sorry display of INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY.

The Tea Party Rallies were never much of a threat to anyone, including the protesters themselves. Nobody got arrested. Everyone was painfully polite. There never was any so-called "astro-turfing" in spite of efforts by some organizations who wanted to capitalize on the disorganized protesters. Basking in the spotlight of the Rachel Maddow Show doesn't make you responsible for anything other than grandstanding.

Organizing the Tea Partiers would be even tougher than hearding cats. Actually the protests themselves, even in the big one in Washington D.C. resembled a country music concert or the infield at a NASCAR Race. Folks brought their own lawn chairs and coolers.

Instead of the smell of marijuana wafting through the air, there was a smell of barbecue. Tea Partiers even picked up their own trash.

An intelligent progressive pundit could have certainly made a case that the Tea Party Protests were misguided. And it is true that Tea Party protesters were guilty of poor spelling, bad grammer and an overuse of the nazi analogies, a characteristic they share with progressive protesters.

Conservatives are just too..... well, they're too conservative. Their beef was they want less government and lower taxes for everyone (not just low income earners). They really disliked George Bush, as his poll numbers proved, but the lurch further to the left by President Obama pushed them into their conservative slow motion version of action.

Now, what really was astro-turfed was the completely manufactured outrage on the left. Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Frank Rich spent literally HUNDREDS of hours attacking the "tea baggers" and trying, very lamely, to paint them as a violent, radical, tool of a super secret right wing gestapo bent on the destruction of life as we know it.

It was, and is, a whole crock of shit.

Now we have real left wing Protesters in Phoenix and throughout the Southwest and we know how to throw a protest! And many more protests are to come as we approach May Day (may 1st). Look for serious protests of large, very angry crowds. Expect arrests. We've already seen vandalism and rocks thrown at police.

The Associated Press reported yesterday, "The furor over Arizona's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants grew Monday as opponents used refried beans to smear swastikas on the state Capitol and civil rights leaders demanded a boycott of the state."

The silence of the left about these protests is deafening. Instead of condemning real violence, protesters are being placed on a pedestal, heroes in the war against oppression.

Conservative pundit Roger Kimball said it best when he wrote, tongue in cheek, that he fully expected....

"The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, and kindred media outlets to repudiate these new outbreaks of hate and racist incitements to violence, narrow-mindedness, bigotry, etc., etc. Look for it tomorrow on the Daily KOS and other web sites dedicated to rooting out irrational prejudice and exposing the sore losers who don’t understand that elections have consequences and who won’t give a new law a chance but who divisively call for the repeal of the will of the people."

Now that's funny.

Intelligent Discussions

I've been ranting lately on several blog sites I visit about the distractions and irrelevant demagoguery directed at fringe personalities rather that the real issues than need discussion and civil debate.

Rush Limbaugh is simply never an issue. He has opinions and he has a style. You can disagree with one or the other or both, but he simply is never the issue, Not ever. Discussing Limbaugh or Ann Coulter or Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann might be fun, but they are side players. Read them or watch them, agree or disagree with them and then move on.

There are real issues and thanks to Barack Obama's far reaching vision we will need to become educated and well versed on many issues over the next four years. President Obama will drag us forward, even if we are kicking and screaming, toward the goals he has set for America.

If we are open minded and if we are really willing to learn we can contribute to this future. Once we actually focus on Education, the Environment, Government Regulation, and Health Care we can build a better America and, hopefully, a better world.

I often get really furious at Keith Olbermann. I feel he is intellectually dishonest, at best. But he often has learned guests and he represents a point of view that is shared by millions. He is saying important things, even if he says them badly.

I was out a noon time today, a real rarity for me. Naturally, Rush Limbaugh was on the radio and I listened for an extended period. Rush's comments and points were excellent. He can be snide and sarcastic. He is an easy mark for those on the left who love to copy, edit and paste. But, if you actually listen to him, he is extraordinarily bright and has extremely valid points.

Rush and Keith are simply two of many sources of information. They are not the issues, they have opinions.

For reasons I can only guess, some folks want to make them the center of the debate. People who do that have an agenda and it's not good. They want to limit debate. They want to distract. They want to inflame fears and build a mob mentality.

Despots have taken this approach throughout history. Blame the Jews. Blame the Blacks. Blame the Hispanics, the Irish, the Italians. Blame the Rich. Blame the immigrants. Blame the welfare mothers. Blame Rush Limbaugh.

Beware anyone who doesn't want to discuss the issues.

In the interest of learning and exploring the real issues, I want to CHALLENGE my readers to link over to Michelle Malkin's excellent discussion about Canadian health care, Did Canadacare kill Natasha Richardson? Michelle and other conservatives are already being demagogued to death by the powers that want to stifle debate for talking about Natalie Richardson's death.

By falsely claiming the Michelle and others are "exploiting" Natalie Richardson's death, these folks simply want to end the discussion about health care. That is so wrong on so many levels. Malkin's article is well written and excellent. It is thought provoking. It raises issues that simply MUST be discussed as we all work together toward the much need national health care system.

So don't listen to the people who want to somehow make Malkin the issue instead of Health Care. Malkin is not the issue. Read her article. And find others who actually discuss the real issues.

Picking Your Opponent

We are looking down the barrel at a ten year Depression. And that is the best case scenario. Best Case.

Barack Obama and a blind, deaf and dumb Democrat Congress have sown the seeds of the destruction of the United States and they are waiting for those seeds to germinate.

Lots and lots of folks are aware of this and they are all screaming at the top of their lungs. The Congressional Budget Office. Wall Street. The nation's leading and most respected economists. Historians. And a few politicians. And even a few in the media, mostly the financial media.



Make no mistake about it. The sky is falling. You are making the most important financial decisions of your entire life right now... whether you know it or not. The Dow dropped below 7,000 today and it will go much lower, possibly as low as 2,500. Unemployment will reach 15%. And the federal government will become technically insolvent, unable to meet its obligations or pay it's debt.

Three things will happen. First, taxes will rise on every single American, including those well below the poverty level to totally oppressive rates. Second, federal services will be cut to the bone, including medicare and social security. Finally, the government will forced to take extraordinary financial measures, either printing money without financial backing, reducing the dollar to a third world currency, or by simply defaulting on the debt, using our military power to demand restructure of debt from our creditors.

Can this be avoided? Only if the nation is totally committed to bringing our best minds and our unified political forces into solving this crisis. It will take the Democrats who control the government to actually take responsibility for their actions and bring back the fiscal responsibility they demanded, but never quite accomplished, during the Bush administration.

What is happening today is the equivalent of a thousand Hurricane Katrinas. The American people are trapped on the roves for their houses and the flood waters are rising. And the federal government's response is worse than anything during Katrina. Far from sending in troops or FEMA, the Obama/Reid/Pelosi team is pumping in more water and demanding no boats enter the rising flood. Help is not on the way.

First I believe President Obama wants to do the right things. He is not a bad man. He is naive and incompetent. He has no idea a crisis looms. He wants to reinvent America and wants to have a clear path to complete his social agenda. That would be all good, I would be the leader of his team, except there is a crisis. There are a hundred Hurricane Katrinas. The flood waters are rising. People are going to die.

So I watched MSNBC tonight and marvelled at Chris Matthews, Rachael Maddow and Keith Olbermann who decided in some sort of Machiavellian unison that the lead story on earth was Rush Limbaugh. Yep. Rush Limbaugh.

Aided by President Obama's Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, presumably with Barack Obama's approval, they made a radio talk show host the number one issue in America. The Dow has now robbed Americans of 60% of their life's savings and is crashing to deep depression levels and the most important thing on earth is Rush Limbaugh?

I feel like I'm watching Joseph Goebbels ramping up the crowds for Kristallnacht. And while Olbermann is deranged, he is no Geobbels, so a sort of an apology is in order. Demonizing Limbaugh is not the equivalent of demonizing the Jews. Olbermann isn't trying to start a race war or promote violence against conservative commentators. Well, except maybe Bill O'Reilly, but that's a whole 'nother story.

Still, you do have the leaders of the Democrat Party, many liberals (and progressives, what ever the hell they are), attempting, apparently successfully, to turn Limbaugh, rather than our failing economy, into the enemy. Since the Democrats are the ones actually destroying the economy, they really need this misdirection, this new enemy and the highly visible Limbaugh fits the bill. He's an easy target. And he is huge, in every sense of the word.

How long will this strategy work? Let's pray not long. Everyday that passes without real economic stimulus and every day that passes without real fiscal responsibility, the closer our nation moves toward the real Armageddon.

Rush Limbaugh? Are all Americans that stupid? I know for sure that Chris Matthews, Rachael Maddow and Keith Olbermann are. Robert Gibbs has played them like a fine violin. Otherwise they would cover the real news.

Three Short Takes on Political Television

BARACK OBAMA TRIUMPHS ON FOX NEWS: Barack Obama not only hit a home run in his long awaited interview with Bill O'Reilly on FOX NEWS, he knocked it our of the park, over the Green Monster!

Sports metaphors aside, Obama and O'Reilly make for terrific television. I can't wait for tonight's installment. Senator Obama is relaxed, articulate, combative, compelling and charismatic. He and Bill O'Reilly seem to have great chemistry. Barack Obama could not possibly have done his candidacy more good.

First, O'Reilly himself helps Obama immensely. O'Reilly's massive ego is an easy foil for Obama and O'Reilly seems to be willing to listen and to concede points. Yet Obama stands toe to toe when he needs to. He never yields to O'Reilly.

Plus, and even more important, Obama is gaining much needed human and up close face time with a gigantic part of the electorate that is devoted to FOX News. No amount of advertising can buy this coverage. By appearing on O'Reilly, Barack Obama appears both fair and fearless.

BARACK OBAMA PUTS THEM TO SLEEP ON OLBERMANN: Compare and contrast the dramatic, combative and compelling interview Barack has with Bill O'Reilly with the sleeper interview with Keith Olbermann. The problem is that Olbermann telegraphs the answer in every question. We learn nothing by watching the soft ball, gift wrapped straight lines supplied by Olbermann.

Once again Keith's problem is that he knows everything he wants to know before the interview ever begins. As a result no one learns anything.

BUT.... Just as we really learn a great deal by Obama's interview with O'Reilly, we might really learn a great deal if Senator McCain sat down with Olbermann. You can bet Olbermann would ask real, in depth and probing questions of McCain.

RACHEL MADDOW CURES INSOMNIA: I just love Rachel Maddow. I love her on Air America and I really loved her on Tucker Carlson's old MSNBC show. But, oh my god, what was that disaster we witnessed last night? To say that Rachel was awful is an understatement. The show was unwatchable. I know. I tried. Twice. Even TiVo couldn't save this snooze fest. You wanted to fast forward to the next commercial.

Rachel's problem is exactly the problem described above with Olbermann's interview with Obama. Rachel knew everything she wanted to say and provided the most boring list of guests, each of whom were ready and waiting to echo her every statement. The interviews were simply pathetic. Leading questions that telegraphed the answers she knew in advance she would receive.

Maddow can hold her own in any argument or intellectual discussion. What's missing from her show, so far, is anything resembling an intelligent discussion. The only compelling few moments came in her discussion with Pat Buchanan. But Buchanan is too lightweight to be a good guest for the near brilliant Maddow. And, I must repeat, Buchanan is no conservative.

If there was a television god, she would design a show where Maddow would face off with a real conservative like Sean Hannity. That would be great television and the viewers would learn something every night.

Let's hope Maddow and the folks at MSNBC tinker with her show and give it some life.

Journalists Win! Olbermann Out as News Anchor

The New York Times reported today that the once powerful NBCNews Organization is making moves to regain control over and return credibility to the pathetic MSNBC Cable Network. As a result Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews have been removed from anchor desk duties on all future political news broadcasts and will be replaced by David Gregory.

The Wizard could not possibly be more pleased. I had confidently predicted this back on August 26th - Keith Olbermann was a disaster and an embarrassment. His iron fisted control eliminated all real reporting and squelched any opposing views. He was a tyrant and a bully and NBC could no longer look the other way.

The Times report stated, in part (editing and emphasis are mine, I encourage you to read the entire report):

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage. The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left. “The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin. Executives at the channel’s parent company, NBC Universal, had high hopes for MSNBC’s coverage of the political conventions. Instead, the coverage frequently descended into on-air squabbles between the anchors, embarrassing some workers at NBC’s news division, and quite possibly alienating viewers. MSNBC remained in last place among the broadcast and cable news networks. In prime time, the channel averaged 2.2 million viewers during the Democratic convention and 1.7 million viewers during the Republican convention. In interviews, 10 current and former staff members said that long-simmering tensions between MSNBC and NBC reached a boiling point during the conventions. “MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict,” one senior staff member observed. “They’re living from fix to fix and swearing they’ll go into rehab the next week.” Mr. Olbermann, a 49-year-old former sportscaster, has become the face of the more aggressive MSNBC, and the lightning rod for much of the criticism. In January, Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews, the host of “Hardball,” began co-anchoring primary night coverage, drawing an audience that enjoyed the pair’s “SportsCenter”-style show. While some critics argued that the assignment was akin to having the Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly anchor on election night — something that has never happened — MSNBC insisted that Mr. Olbermann knew the difference between news and commentary. But in the past two weeks, that line has been blurred. On the final night of the Republican convention, after MSNBC televised the party’s video “tribute to the victims of 9/11,” including graphic footage of the World Trade Center attacks, Mr. Olbermann abruptly took off his journalistic hat. “I’m sorry, it’s necessary to say this,” he began. After saying that the video had exploited the memories of the dead, he directly apologized to viewers who were offended. Then, sounding like a network executive, he said it was “probably not appropriate to be shown.” Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams, the past and present anchors of “NBC Nightly News,” have told friends and colleagues that they are finding it tougher and tougher to defend the cable arm of the news division, even while they anchored daytime hours of convention coverage on MSNBC and contributed commentary each evening. Mr. Williams did not respond to a request for comment and Mr. Brokaw declined to comment. At a panel discussion in Denver, Mr. Brokaw acknowledged that Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews had “gone too far” at times, but emphasized they were “not the only voices” on MSNBC, according to The Washington Post. Some tensions have spilled out on-screen. On the first night in Denver, as the fellow MSNBC host Joe Scarborough talked about the resurgence of the McCain campaign, Mr. Olbermann dismissed it by saying: “Jesus, Joe, why don’t you get a shovel?” The following night, Mr. Olbermann and his co-anchor for convention coverage, Mr. Matthews, had their own squabble after Mr. Olbermann observed that Mr. Matthews had talked too long. NBC Universal executives are also known to be concerned about the perception that MSNBC’s partisan tilt in prime time is bleeding into the rest of the programming day. On a recent Friday afternoon, a graphic labeled “Breaking News” asked: “How many houses does Palin add to the Republican ticket?” Mr. Griffin called the graphic “an embarrassment.”

A Tale of Two Conventions

>>>>>>8/31/2008 10 am: THE UPDATES JUST KEEP ON COMING. MARY OVER A FREEDOM EDEN HAS NEW INFORMATION AND A PATENTED MARY RANT ABOUT THE COMPLETE DISASTER THAT MSNBC HAS BECOME: MSNBC - NOT FAIR AND BALANCED

>>>>>>8/27/2008 10 pm: THE DISASTER AT MSNBC HAS EXPLODED. READ THE STORY ON POLITICO TONIGHT: MSNBC prez defends convention team

>>>>>>8/27/2008 10 am: SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM FOR AN UPDATE ON THIS ESSAY.

ORIGINAL POST 8/26/2008 10:53 pm:

Hillary Clinton gave a great speech tonight. She brought down the house. She was brilliant. No matter which network you watched, Clinton was a master at the top of her game. All three cable news networks carried her speech uninterrupted and in full.

But before and after the speech you could watch two entirely different conventions. Your could watch the real convention as it was unfolding on CNN or you could watch a fairy tale make-believe convention on MSNBC.

To summarize, Keith Olbermann is a complete blithering idiot and he is singlehandedly destroying the once great NBC News organization. O.K., not singlehandedly. He has help from the nearly helpless and totally bewildered Chris Matthews and the completely biased and totally unqualified David Gregory. Their combined performance can only be described as pathetic.

When you are so totally biased in favor of one candidate, you continuously seek to bolster your biased opinion. This became David Gregory's sole mission on the floor of the convention. So Gregory pigeonholed Governor Bill Richardson, who dutifully recited the Obama mantra and avoided all controversy.

But Gregory didn't need any help, Olbermann will not brook any naysayers. Disagree with Obama's perfection and face the wrath of Olbermann.

As result we had Keith Olbermann pontificating about the total unity of the Democrat Party at the exact moment CNN was interviewing a tearful black woman delegate who said she might not be able to vote for Obama this November.

Olbermann's unity was a myth, a figment of Olbermann's mind. When you already know all the answers, you no longer look for or even tolerate any facts that might point in a new or unexpected direction. A person as completely blind as Olbermann cannot be allowed to anchor a news program.

As a result, tempers are boiling over at MSNBC with near open warfare between Olbermann and Gregory versus an incredulous Joe Scarborough. Insiders advise that Scarborough is close to being fired for daring to challenge the all powerful Olbermann. Yet most outside analysts agree that Scarborough is right and MSNBC is a network careening out of control toward the abyss.

Part of the question is how long can Tom Brokaw and Brian Wilson and the rank and file journalists tolerate the complete destruction of the once great NBC News Organization. And do they have the power today to challenge Olbermann.

But, mark my words Olbermann's days are numbered. Part of the handwriting is in the overnight ratings. CNN's audience was 50% greater than FOX and nearly double the ratings of MSNBC. People want fairness and objectivity from their news sources.

FOX and MSNBC both fail because they are not fair or balanced. CNN has power because Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer and Campbell Brown (she escaped from MSNBC just in time) worked hard to be fair and report the news instead of papering the walls with rosy Obama colored wallpaper.

UPDATE 8/27/2008: Maureen Dowd tells the story of the Denver convention that Keith Olbermann and the MSNBC cheer leading squad tries to avoid. Read her column in today's New York Times: High Anxiety in the Mile High City

On a separate note I watched what seemed to me to be an entirely different David Gregory this morning on Morning Joe. I like the detached and analytical Gregory on display this morning much better than the cheerleader we were treated to last night.