“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.”
Olbermann, who does not hide his liberal views, has acknowledged donations of $2,400 each to Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords during this election cycle.
NBC’s ethics policy generally bars political activity, including contributions, without the approval of the president of NBC News, Steve Capus, according to a 2007 story on MSNBC.com.
Ed Morrissey doubts the suspension will last past the weekend.
I don’t get this one. MSNBC has suspended Keith Olbermann because he contributed to several Democrat campaigns. Apparently, MSNBC wants to maintain it’s image as a non-biased news organization. Which engenders this response from me: WHAT?!? Are they kidding? The man’s 8pm show ought to be listed as an in-kind contribution to the DNC. Good grief. Really – is this a big deal? The cat’s been out of that bag so long ago that it’s dead.
I was not shocked to learn that MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann had contributed to Democrats. What truly shocked me? Finding out that NBC has an “ethics policy”!
What bugs me about suspending Olby for “ethics” infractions is that, if only in a nominal way, it lets MSNBC go on pretending that its commentators are journalists. It’s like when a major paper runs a “news” story that’s obviously slanted to the left and which happens to contain a spelling error. They’ll happily issue a correction for the misspelling but the bias goes unmentioned; that’s their way of signaling to readers that they’re scrupulous about accuracy even while they’re dropping hatchet jobs on conservatives while professing impartiality all the while. As Ed noted earlier, it’s a sick joke to suggest that Olby throwing a few thou to Democratic candidates is an unpardonable journalistic sin while that horror show that MSNBC happily aired on Tuesday night is just good reportorial funsies for the viewers at home. I don’t care how many posters of Murrow Olby has on his wall: He’s not a reporter, he’s not a journalist, and no one but no one but no one thinks that he is, so why are journalistic ethics being applied to him?
I think that, over the course of two years we were so busy and so focused on getting a bunch of stuff done that, we stopped paying attention to the fact that leadership isn’t just legislation. That it’s a matter of persuading people. And giving them confidence and bringing them together. And setting a tone,” Mr. Obama told 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft in an exclusive interview set to air Sunday. (See clip below)
“Making an argument that people can understand,” Mr. Obama continued, “I think that we haven’t always been successful at that. And I take personal responsibility for that. And it’s something that I’ve got to examine carefully … as I go forward.”
Can I have a show of hands? Who thinks Obama didn’t spend enough time pushing, and “explaining” his policies for the past two years?
I’m counting approximately zero of you. Because if you’re like me, you lunge for the remote every time you see the most over-exposed President in American history about to make another speech on t.v.
Obama’s problem isn’t that he didn’t spend enough time making his arguments. By March 19 of this year, he had made 471 speeches; 54 speeches on the health care bill, alone.
On no other issue has President Obama put in as much effort and displayed as much passion as on health care.
Since launching his campaign for health care reform with a White House forum on March 5th of last year, Mr. Obama has delivered 54 speeches and statements on the issue.
He has done health care events in 12 states, some of them more than once. He’s done 9 Town Hall Meetings on health care and made it the focus of 13 of his Saturday radio and Internet addresses.
No, the problem is the content of his speeches. The American people have heard him loud and clear, and they resoundingly reject his big government solutions. What more, afterso many of his assertions have proven to be lies, people no longer trust him to tell the truth. That, more than anything else, is what led to the historic shellacking on election day. Voters hate to be lied to.
But he can’t admit any of this, can he? So he’s left with the, “poor messaging” excuse. Of course with Democrat-Socialists, everything comes down to “messaging”...”How can we fool them today”…so in that sense he’s being honest, I guess. He needs to come up with better lies to fool people with.
Can you imagine? The voters deliver a historic thumping, toss out more than 60 Democrats, and the survivors — in a demonstration of how clearly they understood the voters’ message — put Pelosi in charge of their caucus. Oh, and she is the most vilified Democrat on the scene, and perhaps the figure who appeared most frequently in campaign ads — for the other party.
What could be better for the Republicans to have Pelosi hang around as the liberal foil for what they’re doing? Usually the House Minority Leader remains obscure to the American public, but Pelosi already has great name recognition and low approval rates. John Boehner might not inspire excitement, but he’ll always have going for him the fact that he’s not Nancy Pelosi.
Blue Dogs like Heath Shuler and Jim Matheson are making noise about opposing her, but they’re now vastly outnumbered by lefties in the caucus. I’m sitting here trying to figure out what strategic angle I might be missing in all this, because it strikes me as simply impossible that this dead weight might actually be retained as the face of the Democratic House caucus. Her favorable rating among independents as of Sunday was eight percent. The GOP just won 60+ seats thanks to a national campaign targeting her above all other Democrats (Obama included) as the archvillain of the Beltway. The progressive caucus can’t possibly be so stupidly loyal as to saddle the party with her toxic numbers for the next House election in 2012 too — especially given their endless crowing vis-a-vis Palin and centrists. To put it in perspective, Palin’s favorables with Democrats are roughly the same as Pelosi’s are with independents. And yet here they are, all set to crown Nancy as the once and future leader of the pack. We can’t possibly be this lucky.
There is a seething anger within the House Democratic Caucus toward Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on the heels of Tuesday’s election drubbing,and it will be very difficult for her to remain at the helm as minority leader, a senior House Democrat told National Journal today.
But the liberal Democrat, a Pelosi supporter and admirer who did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said there has been little communication so far among Democrats about any specific successors to Pelosi.
The veteran lawmaker – who is himself not interested in a leadership job – said it is obvious to him that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., wants to become the next minority leader, but predicted that others would emerge.
The lawmaker said those internal talks are stymied because Pelosi continues to provide no signal about what she plans to do. Ultimately, he said, Pelosi may not be given a choice.
We will soon find out if all vestiges of sanity have left the (Dem) House.
Election/voter fraud or gross incompetence is becoming apparent in Connecticut. Lauraw at AoSHQ hs been keeping an eye on the situation: Bridgeport Connecticut: Video From The Polls
Politico noted that on October 7, Olbermann had House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on his show to discuss Murdoch News Corp. donations to Republicans, and asked Clyburn: “Is there a legislative response to the idea that there is a national cable-news outlet that goes beyond having a point of view and actually starts to shill for partisan causes and actually starts to donate to partisan groups of one party?” Obviously, Keith should have been talking into the mirror — which you just know he does a lot.
Olby must be becoming an embarrassment to the left, for Politico to go after him.
Bernadine Dohrn, wife of Bill Ayers and co-founder of the radical left group Weather Underground, reportedly spoke with NewsClick India recently about her thoughts on America and called the right “racist,“ ”armed,“ ”hostile,“ and ”unspeakable.“ The clip ends with her saying that the American government is the ”real terrorist”: Watch the video at theBlaze.
“Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild!” The “War Council” ended with a formal declaration of war against “AmeriKKKa,” always spelled with three K’s to signify the United States’ allegedly ineradicable white racism.
High ranking officials from the state of Maharashtra were invited to an event at the Taj Mahal hotel with Mr. Obama, but were told that they would have to show their papers to get in. According to The Times of India:
Miffed by the US consulate demanding personal details like birth date, nationality and passport number, Maharashtra’s top politicians and bureaucrats have decided to pay it back in the same currency. While the home minister and the home secretary have declined to attend an event graced by President Barack Obama, four others, including chief minister Ashok Chavan and deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal, are mulling the same.
“We are shocked over the tone of the invitation letter. (US consul general Paul) Folmsbee expects Chavan and Bhujbal to produce their identity cards before entering the venue. They have been asked to submit their details like date of birth, nationality, passport and PAN to the consulate,” said a senior official on condition of anonymity. “We feel this is no way to treat the chief minister of a state. Chavan and Bhujbal are undecided on whether to attend the event.”
My column today spotlights the defeat of a little-noticed initiative in Washington state pushed by left-wing class warriors — and what it portends for the punish-the-wealthy zealots in Washington, D.C. The results should embolden the GOP to demand all-or-nothing tax relief. The message: Stop the Obama tax increases. Stop the war on wealth and prosperity. Stop the Beltway job-killing machine (speaking of which, the latest jobless report is out and unemployment remains stuck at 9.6 percent).
Dingy Harry has already dug in. Get ready to rumble.
Nice Deb 
