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Keith Olbermann asks those who voted for California's Proposition 8 how in the world it should affect them whether gay couples wish to legalize their relationship.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not... understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want -- a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Only now you are saying to them -- no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights -- even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?

On a related note, California Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger expressed his disappointment in the passage of Proposition 8, and cheered protesters up and down the state by telling them the "fight isn't over" and said he hoped to that the California Supreme Court overturn Prop. 8.

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You know I loves me some Keith Olbermann, but I think when he got to the point where he was doing a Campaign (Special) Comment daily and got pulled off debate coverage by Brokaw because of fears that he would not be able to keep from editorializing that a SNL spoof was coming up.

Ben Affleck tries to hold onto Keith's gravitas as he delivers his #5 story, does Worst Person in The World and delivers a Special Comment against the president of the co-op to which he applied. I lost count how many resignations he called for. Ouch.

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What's that old saying? When you point a finger at someone, you have four fingers pointing back at yourself. Well, just like every other smear that the McCain campaign has desperately flung at the Obama campaign, the reality of this new "palling around with anti-Israel types like Rashid Khalidi" looks bad...bad for McCain.

Senator, Senator, Senator...Morals aside, this is the classic problem of guilt by association:

Obama and Ayers gave Khalidi's organizations 80-thousand dollars. McCain gave Khalidi's organizations 448 thousand dollars.

Obama and Ayers. Obama and Ayers. Obama and Ayers... and McCain.

Obama and Ayers and McCain. Ayers and McCain.

Ayers and McCain!

So now, not only is Rashid Khalidi your problem, not Obama's. But now you're connected to Bill Ayers. The only difference is who gave this nebulously nefarious guy with the Arabic name more money, you or Ayers?

Golly, Senator, that'd be you... by a figure of at least 5-1.

Which is also the ratio of your campaign's sleaze bombs that blow up in your own face.

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Making good on his assumption (or was that a threat?) that the waning days of the election may result in a Special Comment every day, this time Keith Olbermann reminds Sarah Palin that actually understanding the responsibility of the Office of the Vice President would not make you a liberal elitist.

I mean, I'd like my President and Vice President to have memorized the Constitution, and abide by it...

Or at least, I'd like them to know more about the Constitution than I do.[..]

Maybe I'm raising the bar too high...

But at least wait until you achieve office before trying to seize power extra-Constitutionally!

"The founders" were not George Bush and Dick Cheney!

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Due to the ongoing hatred and vile nature of the McCarthy McCain/Palin campaign and Republican politicians and pundits, Keith Olbermann is moved yet again to another Special Comment. This time, Olbermann castigates the entire notion 'Us vs. Them' notion that the Republican Party mouthpieces have been perpetuating in their support for John McCain's candidacy. And worse, for someone who has made his ability to reach across the aisle in a bipartisan manner a mainstay of his campaign, John McCain's allowing his proxies to divide Americans into "good" and "bad" camps shows how far he has slid from his "maverick" days.

(Senator McCain,) I disagree with you on virtually every major point of policy and practice.

And yet I do not think you "anti-America." I would not hesitate to join you in time of crisis in defense of this country.

Fortunately you did not echo this chorus of base hatred.

But neither have you repudiated it.

What is "pro-America", Senator?

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Keith delivered a scathing, impassioned Special Comment tonight, calling out John McCain and Sarah Palin's dangerous, out-of-control hate rallies and their responsibility for stoking them.

Disgraceful?

Obviously, Senator, you haven't heard your own speeches, and Governor Palin's, and what people shout during them.

And you haven't heard your state GOP Chair in Virginia, Jeffrey Frederick, giving talking points to 30 of your field-operatives heading out to canvass voters in Gainesville, Virginia...

With a reporter present, telling them to try to forge a connection between Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden - to emphasize bombings and terrorism.

And you haven't heard those volunteers, your volunteers Senator McCain, shout back "and he won't salute the flag" and "we don't even know where Senator Obama was really born."

Senator McCain -- these people are speaking for you!

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Download | Play    Download | Play [h/t Heather, who notes this is a big file]

Now that the McCain campaign has made abundantly clear that their only shot at salvaging this election is by going full-bore negative against Barack Obama with despicable, disgraceful and dishonorable smears, Keith responds with another great Special Comment.

"The Governor of Alaska wants to start calling people terrorists -- and insisting of Senator Obama that quote "this is not a man who sees America like you and I see America" -- and whose rhetoric like that and the "pallin' around with terrorists" line were rightly described by the Associated Press yesterday as a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing kind of way of slipping racism into the equation because it's a nifty trick to remind the white folk that (psst) Obama is black.

But overriding this sleaziness -- and dog-gone it, the Governor of Alaska has got to be the sleaziest politician working the stage at the moment -- there is the sheer blessed stupidity of letting herself become the bomb-thrower when her own life is full of domestic terrorists.

Governor -- Bill Ayres? Your hubby was in this secessionist hate group for which you recorded a video.

Governor -- Jeremiah Wright? That pastor you credit with helping you become Governor, is either a con man or a psycho who believes he can tell which woman in the village is the witch and which is the governor."

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Keith Olbermann takes on John McCain and his campaign managers with another powerful Special Comment on Monday's Countdown. McCain has consistently voted against our troops, but he and his campaign continue to spread lies and distortions about Barack Obama, painting him as unpatriotic and anti-military, while glossing over his own betrayal of our military on the floor of the Senate.

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Now as promised a Special Comment on the remarks of the Senior Senator from Arizona about Senator Obama at the VFW Convention, and about NBC News and MSNBC.

Four times in just two days, Senator McCain's campaign managers have, simply, hung him out to dry.

First, trying to scapegoat the media, in the exact way that has spelled doom for other presidential candidates already watching from the sidelines.

Second, doing so with a petulant statement so full of holes that it virtually **confirms** that which was reported, and which set off this pointless temper tantrum in the first place.

Third, sending the candidate out to speak before the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, even as the millstones of a series of disastrous, anti-veteran votes, still figuratively dangled from around his neck.

And fourth, encouraging Senator McCain, while there, to address his opponent in the language of unseemly contempt, undignified calumny, and holier-than-thou persiflage unsupported by reality... near-nonsensical bluster that -- at best -- makes the speaker look like a dyspeptic grouchy neighbor shouting "Hey you kids, get out of my yard."

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Keith Olbermann presented Barack Obama with a few options on how to handle the pending FISA legislation in a Special Comment on Monday's Countdown.

Senator Obama had once said he was against giving immunity to telecom companies who assisted the Bush administration in illegally spying on American citizens, but more recently has said he would, in fact, vote for the FISA legislation, immunity included. As Keith points out, Obama has taken political hits from the right and the left and the right is going to attack him no matter how he votes, so he might as well do the right thing and demand telecom immunity be stripped from the bill. 

You've already taken the political hit from the Right, for saying you'd seek to strip out, or rescind immunity. You've already taken the political hit from the Left, for saying you'd vote for the FISA bill even with the immunity. You've paid the political price in advance.

Now buy yourself -- and those who have most ardently supported you -- something worth more than just class action suits against Verizon.

Explain that you are standing aside on civil immunity, not just for political expediency, but for a greater and more tangible good -- the holding to account, of the most-corrupt, the most dangerous, and the most anti-democracy presidential administration in our long history.

Of course, if you disagree with this interpretation -- if you think the FISA bill doesn't have the giant loophole, or if you don't think you, as president, would be ready to support criminal prosecution of... well, criminals -- then your duty is clear.

Vote against the FISA bill, if it still carries that immunity.

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John McCain has said many a stupid thing during this general election campaign. But when he told Matt Lauer on The Today Show that bringing our troops home was just not that important, he crossed a line from stupidity to being unforgivable:

You have attested to: a fairly easy success; an overwhelming victory in a very short period of time; in which we would be welcomed as liberators; which you assured us would not require our troops stay for decades but merely for years; from which we could bring them all home, since you noted many Iraqis resent American military presence; in which all those troops coming home will also stay there, not being injured, for a hundred years; but most will be back by 2013; and the timing of their return, is… not… that… important.

That, Senator McCain, is context.

And that, Senator McCain, is madness.

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On Monday, Keith Olbermann delivered a post-script to his Special Comment from last week in which he told President Bush to "shut the hell up." Since some lunatic fringe commentators were deliberately twisting Keith's words and implying that he called American soldiers -- and not Bush administration officials, to whom he was clearly referring -- "cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives," he felt compelled to clarify his remarks.

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It seems to me that these right-wingers have inadvertently shown their true colors, their instinctive hatred of and contempt for, these self-sacrificing Americans, who have been needlessly placed in harm's way by these very commentators and the politicians they support.

They hear criticism of our nation's collective conduct in Iraq, and immediately assume it's the fault of the soldiers.

In the wake of an insult that exists only in their minds and never in my words nor in my heart, there remains, I think, only one question to ask: Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin: Why do you hate our troops?

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In an astoundingly ignorant interview with The Politico's Mike Allen Tuesday, President Bush insinuated that electing a Democrat in November would lead to another attack on America, and revealed that he made the ultimate sacrifice by giving up golf shortly after the start of the Iraq War -- the timing of which he lied about. Naturally, Keith ripped into him tonight -- with all the anger and passion you've come to expect from a Special Comment -- for continuing this despicable fear-mongering, and for failing to understand what true sacrifice is.

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Do your part in telling President Bush to "shut the hell up": Digg It!

"Mr. President," he was asked, "you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?
"Yes," began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans -- on our history.
"It really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."
Golf, Sir?
Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq?
Do you think these families, Mr. Bush - their lives blighted forever -- care about you playing golf?
Do you think, Sir, they care about you?
You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed.
Sir, to show your solidarity with them - you gave up golf?
Sir, to show your solidarity with them - you didn't give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war.
Sir, to show your solidarity with them - you didn't even give up talking about Iraq - a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world?
Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn't give up... your
4,000 dead Americans and your response... was to stop playing golf!
Golf.
Not "gulf" - golf.

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Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on today's Countdown was a scathing rebuke of President Bush for continuing to play the fear card, trying to scare the hell out of the American people and vowing to veto any FISA legislation that does not contain telecom amnesty.

You are a liar, Mr. Bush, and after showing some skill at it, you have ceased to even be a very good liar.

And your minions like John Boehner -- your Republican congressional crash dummies who just happen to decide to walk out of Congress when a podium-full of microphones await them -- they should just keep walking, out of Congress and if possible, out of the country.

For they -- and you, sir -- have no place in a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

The lot of you, are the symbolic descendants of the despotic middle managers of some banana republic, to whom "Freedom" is an ironic brand name, a word you reach for, when you want to get away with its opposite.

Thus, Mr. Bush, your panoramic invasion of privacy is dressed up as "protecting America."

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Keith Olbermann's Special Comment tonight on Countdown was yet another scathing rebuke of President Bush and his lies about the pending FISA legislation and fear tactics during his final State of the Union address earlier this week. Bush has said repeatedly he would veto any FISA legislation that did not include immunity for the telecommunications companies who broke the law and betrayed the American people. However, as Keith points out, if the president were to veto the legislation and there was another terrorist attack inside the U.S., he, and he alone would be responsible for it -- all in the name of protecting huge corporations over the American people he was charged with protecting.

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Sorry, Mr. Bush. The eavesdropping provisions of FISA have obviously had no impact on counter-terrorism, and there is no current or perceived terrorist threat, the thwarting of which could hinge on an e-mail or a phone call going through room 641-A at AT&T in San Francisco next week or next month.

Because if there were, Mr. Bush, and you were to, by your own hand, veto an extension of this eavesdropping, and some terrorist attack were to follow, you would not merely be guilty of siding with the terrorists, you would not merely be guilty of prioritizing the telecoms over the people, you would not merely be guilty of stupidity, you would not merely be guilty of treason... but you would be personally, and eternally, responsible.

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Olbermann's got a new book coming out called "Truth and Consequences" Let's see how far up the charts we can get this one...Grab a copy...

Cali Scribe says: Keith Olbermann Thanks Us!

Keith thanked C&L for helping drive up the sales of his book “Worst Person in the World” on Countdown---back on Sept, 1st 2005:

Olbermann: And wait, look, it‘s here! The book version of the “Worst Person in the World” hits stores next week. But guess what happened after the Rumsfeld special comment, the sales ranking of the “Worst Person in the World” on Amazon.com went from No. 19,000, to No. 18. Bill-o‘s new book ranks No. 728. Our thanks to our web boosters like “Crooks and Liars” for the love.

Here's video of the Rumsfeld Special Comment: Download | play Download | play

Glenn Gleenwald wrote: "C&L’s great achievement

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