Another McNews?

I'm not sure this is the best way to reach out to "Red State" voters, but it looks like the Washington Post is considering turning itself into another USA Today.

In an effort to win new readers, Downie said Post reporters will be required to write shorter stories. The paper's design and copy editors will be given more authority to make room for more photographs and graphics.

Yes, this is what we need. One of the nation's most respected newspapers publishing shorter stories and more pictures. No... we don't need more reporting, we need more pictures of the world's largest pound cake or the world's biggest ball of twine.

Nice....

Its not just political cartoonists and columnists that are going after Condoleezza Rice in a thinly disguised racial manner, now its radio talk show hosts.

Radio talk show host John Sylvester on WTDY-AM in Madison has drawn criticism for calling Rice an "Aunt Jemima".

In his defense Sylvester said:

that he used the term on Wednesday's show to describe Rice and other blacks as having only a subservient role in the Bush administration.

This isn't the first time Sylvester has used racially charged language to describe members of Bush's cabinet.

Sylvester, who is white, also referred to Powell as an "Uncle Tom" — a
contemptuous term for a black whose behavior toward whites is regarded as fawning or servile.

I can only imagine the outcry if a conservative talk show host had made similar comments concerning an African American member of a Democratic cabinet.

Oh, wait a minute, didn't Rush Limbaugh get in a little trouble a couple of years back for making some not too PC comments when describing the reasons behind the popularity of a certain black quarterback?

A Disgrace

I can only image what the reaction would be if Oliphant, Doonesbury, and Danziger were conservatives poking fun at a Democrat African-American Secretary of State.

The UK Mirror, however, wins the award for the most blatantly racist commentary of the year:

IF THERE were a monkey in the White House - and many reckon there is - then his trainer would be the world's most powerful person.

Unbelievable.

The Hill Takes on Exit Pollsters

Dr. David Hill, of The Hill, just ravages the polling firm in charge of this year's exit polls:

But let’s be clear on one point. Despite Mitofsky’s great reputation, it is becoming clearer every election that he’s not very good at what he purports to do well: namely, running exit-polling operations.

Ouch!

This Is A Great Line

From Jay Leno:

"I haven't seen this many secretaries running from the Oval Office since Clinton was in there!"

Former-Celebrity Idiot Alert

Former-Celebrity Linda Ronstadt on the Presidential election results:

"People don't realize that by voting Republican, they voted against themselves," she says. Of Iraq in particular, she adds, "I worry that some people are entertained by the idea of this war. They don't know anything about the Iraqis, but they're angry and frustrated in their own lives. It's like Germany, before Hitler took over. The economy was bad and people felt kicked around. They looked for a scapegoat. Now we've got a new bunch of Hitlers."

Hey Linda, who is Saddam in your analogy? The Kaiser?

One little suggestion to Linda: Given the fact that you lost your Vegas gig and (from what I can tell) not many people are banging down your door with new offers, you may want to tone down the political rants. Let's face it, the left already has one heavy-set loon and I'm not sure that there are any current openings over at Air America. As a result, you may not want to risk pissing off any of the handful of your remaining fans.

And remember what Michael Jordan used to say: "Republicans buy sneakers too!"

O'Reilly Loses His Mind

I always thought that O'Reilly was a little insane but now I have confirmation that he has full-blown lost it. On last night's O'Reilly Factor, "the humble correspondent" provided the following recommendation to President Bush for a replacement for Colin Powell as the next Secretary of State:

And now I'm going to be controversial. Now, I know the word is Condoleezza Rice will get the job. And she is absolutely brilliant and very loyal to President Bush, but I would replace Secretary Powell with Bill Clinton.Yikes! The former president probably wouldn't take the job, but if he did, countries like France, Germany, and Spain would like the move, perhaps cooperate more with America. Add Canada and Indonesia to that group as well.

Beyond the fact that having Bill Clinton back on the national stage again would be a great source of entertainment and fodder, Clinton would be an unmitigated disaster as SOS. I mean, wasn't the fact that the State Department wasn't on the same page with the Administration on most foreign policy matters (particularly Iraq) a major problem for Bush during his first term? How would putting Clinton (and his massive ego) at State alleviate that problem? The answer: it wouldn't. But when has the obvious stopped O'Reilly from making an ass out of himself.

Has 60 Minutes Been Caught Again?

A couple of University of Alabama professors think so. They accuse 60 Minutes, and lead reporter Ed Bradley, off "sloppiness" and including "numerous errors and misleading information" in their report.

Impact quote:

In the wake of "Memogate", "60 Minutes" has done it again. Sunday’s report on the killing of Emmett Till was an example of slipshod and misleading journalism. The producers have few excuses in this case. They did it with their eyes open. They were warned not just once but several times that their forthcoming report might contain inaccuracies. In a rush to air the story, however, they plowed ahead, instead of following the first rule of journalism: getting their facts straight.

Sound familiar?

Not Welcome in Norman

Apparently, Sooner fans were not very nice hosts to a certain retiring network news anchor this weekend.

I guess when you get booed louder in Norman, Oklahoma than the Nebraska football team then its probably time to hang it up.

This Week's Dick Cheney Award Goes To...

To the member of the media that shows the most balls over the past week...

Our friend Keith Olbermann over at MSNBC.

After a week of peddling Internet generated voter fraud conspiracy theories, Olbermann has the gumption to complain about himself being the subject of Internet generated conspiracy theories!

Now that does take some balls!

On a related note, Bill Steigerwald of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review lets Keith have it in yesterday's column.

First An Apology, Now...

A firing! CBS has apparently axed the producer that made the decision to cut away from the end of CSI: New York in order to air a special report on the death of Yaser Arafat.

Is it just me or is CBS's reaction bordering on overkill?

Putting Dowd on the Couch

Vaughn Ververs just eviscerates NYT columnist Maureen Dowd in today's National Journal (it is subscription only unfortunately).

After complementing Dowd on her work over the past 8 years (equally slamming both the Clinton and Bush administrations), Ververs laments that Dowd may have run out of things to say, and worse yet, destroyed her reputation by joining the talking head masses and taking her act to TV.

Impact quote:

For years, Dowd was able to maintain a air of mystery because she was one of the
very few political commentators who refused to ply her trade on television like
the riffraff. Her above-the-fray approach seemed refreshing and principled until
she broke character and started showing up to discuss the presidential election
-- and her recent book. It was then we realized the bigger reason for her reclusiveness.

Don Imus, whose show has hosted Dowd on many occasions (mostly by phone) has warned Dowd to stay off the airwaves. His reasoning is, as we understand it, that she is too good, too elevated to sink to the level of the Dick Morrises of the world. She should have stuck to the advice of her friend, because the fact is that she's distracting at best and a disaster at worst.

Add to that her seeming inability to look into a camera and her obvious unease, and it's easy to see why she stayed away from the small screen for so long.

Impact quote II:

But without a new target in the White House (and how many more Bush-on-the couch columns can there be), where will she take her act for the next four years? One thing is for sure. It won't -- or shouldn't -- be on television.

Ververs is right on the money here. Dowd's TV appearances (mostly on NBC) have been outright disasters. She has no personality at all - at least none that comes across on TV. Instead, she comes across as a whinny, insecure loser with nothing to say. That's a mighty big fall for a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist.

Memo to Keith

If the NY Times thinks your full of crap, you may want to rethink your position.

A quote that Olbermann should really take heed of:

"I'd give my right arm for Internet rumors of a stolen election to be true," said David Wade, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, "but blogging it doesn't make it so. We can change the future; we can't rewrite the past."

In fairness, it appears that Olbermann has switched vote count theories yet again (I think this makes this his fourth theory to date) and now is focusing on the potential recounts in Ohio and New Hampshire. The recounts could be a very real possibility but the chances that a recount could actually change the results of the Presidential election are so remote that the White Sox have a better chance to win the World Series next year than the recount does of changing the final result.

Olbermann Bloviates Tonight....

Again, nothing new. But boy, he sure sounds earnest.

Honestly, beyond the basic fact (that we all concede) that our elections are not perfect and should be improved, what new news has he broken? In a word: nothing.

Now Joe Trippi is on bragging about the importance of bloggers. Interesting, I don't recall either Olbermann or Trippi extolling the virtues of bloggers when they ripped apart Dan Rather and 60 Minutes. Amazing how one's opinion changes when the tables are turned.

Now "B" Actors Are "Losing It" Over the Election

Maybe Al Gore could recommend a therapist.

How Fast...

will 2008 Democratic candidates for President run away from this film? Do you think any of them will be caught dead at the premier?

Honesty, for Republicans, Michael Moore is a gift that keeps on giving. I love this quote:

"Fifty-one percent of the American people lacked information (in this election) and we want to educate and enlighten them," Moore was quoted in Thursday's edition of Variety. "They weren't told the truth. We're communicators and it's up to us to start doing it now."

Yep, keep it going Mike. The red states will keep on getting redder.

One request to Mike: Can you lose the Spartan hat? Thanks in advance.

CBS Apologizes...

For interrupting last night's broadcast of CSI New York in order to air a special report about the death of Yasser Arafat.

That's nice, but one wonders whether they should be apologizing for not airing a fireworks celebration in honor of the death of one of the worst terrorists this world has ever seen.

At the risk of sounding like a "Red Stater" - I hope God is settling the score right now.

FCC Decency Rules Taken To an Extreme

Some ABC affiliates chose not to air tonight's network broadcast of "Saving Private Ryan" fearing that it might run afoul of FCC regs.

An example of FCC decency standards run amok?

MSM Jumps On Board The Conspiracy Train...

But not in the way that Conspiracy-boy Keith would like.

From the Washington Post this morning... Basically Keith is full of it.

Blogger Keith Is On A Roll...

Another day, another insightful rant from MSNBC's resident conspiracy theorist Keith Olbermann.

Today's subject (along with the possibility of a recount in both Ohio and New Hampshire which I hope to get to later) is the admittedly strange decision taken by the Warren County (Ohio) Board of Elections to close the vote counting process from the media due to apparent "security concerns."

I must concede that the decision of the Warren County BOE is rather strange and not really supported by the facts, but the real question is: what were they hiding? Was this a case of a heavily Democratic county that suddenly witnessed a surge of Republican voting? Was this a case of a Republican County that suddenly witnessed a surge in Bush support without a corresponding rise in Kerry support? The answers to these questions are "no" and "no".

Warren County is located in heavily Republican southern Ohio. In this year's election (according to the Ohio Secretary of State's election web site) the county went to Bush 66,523 to 25,399. In 2000, the county went to Bush 48,318 to 19,142.

Now, you might notice that there was a significant increase in raw votes between 2000 and 2004. But a quick comparison of the percentage increases in the votes for Bush (38%) and Kerry/Gore (33%) reveal roughly comparable increases in support for the two candidates. Really, what we are talking about here is an increase of about a 12,000 vote advantage for Bush. And in an election in which the candidates for both parties enjoyed an increase of about 20% in raw vote support state wide between 2000 and 2004, the results in Warren County don't really look that strange.

Also, consider this. Its not like the two parties didn't have representation in the county building while the vote count was going on. Each County Board of Elections is about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans and as of yet (unless I am missing something) I have not heard one word from a Democrat on the Warren County Board of Elections objecting to the vote count.

Once again, this looks to be another example of Olbermann taking a small story and blowing it way out of proportion. It also appears to be another example of Olbermann's short attention span. Yesterday it was voting problems in Cleveland (which was subsequently explained). Now its the strange occurrences in Warren County.

To paraphrase Dan Aykroyd on SNL: "Olbermann seems to switch from one conspiracy theory to another with the frequency of a cheap ham radio."

Keith Finds No Support...

From the Kerry campaign! This from Kerry's lead election attorney:

''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities.

''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered."

At least Olbermann has the support of the left-wing nuts.

Keith Strikes Again

Olbermann just can't get enough of this. On his blog he writes the following:

With news this morning that the computerized balloting in North Carolina is so thoroughly messed up that all state-wide voting may be thrown out and a second election day scheduled, the story continues.

Interesting... but let's check the Charlotte Observer. This is what Olbermann is referring to.

More than 4,500 votes irretrievably lost in coastal Carteret County could trigger a new statewide election if the official margin of victory in two Council of State races is close enough, state election officials said Monday.

It appears that Olbermann has a problem with reading comprehension. The proposed re-election would only be for the contested Council of State races NOT all the state races (Senate, Congress etc.).

Clearly this is not a good situation and one that hopefully is the exception and not rule. But let's not over-hype this. The NC case is not an example of whole-sale voter fraud and certainly not an example of the kind of voter fraud that would impact the outcome of the presidential election.

Please keep it going Keith, you are a gift that keeps on giving.

NPR Lovers Take Heart...

There is now a blog for you....

http://ilovenpr.blogspot.com/

I am hoping that this will be the site that I can go to for updates on Yasser Arafat's health and the upcoming reorganization of the great PLO.

OK... Now Its Official...

Keith Olbermann is a partisan nut. His latest blog entry, while conceeding that the vast majority of his argument has been refuted, continues to contend that the Ohio election was "a mess" and concludes that the results in Ohio can't be trusted.

Example: Olbermann's response to the news that the Cleveland voter reporting glitch question had been resolved:

The punch, of course, is the explanation that the 29 more-votes-than voters precincts in greater Cleveland appear to have been caused by the addition of Absentee Ballots. The total difference between registered voters and votes (93,000) might be explained by that process, but it does little for one's confidence in the whole result from Ohio.

Huh? The discrepancy has been explained Keith. How on earth does a glitch in vote "reporting" have anything to do with vote "counting"? If pressed, I doubt that Olbermann could explain it with a straight face.

But wait... there's more from the wacky world of Keith:

The problem is, the rubber clown immediately bounces back with the report that
officials in Youngstown managed to catch a slight glitch in their voting there: a total drawn from all the precincts that initially showed negative 25,000,000 million votes cast.

Again, huh? I know reading is a skill, but I think that even the dimmest among us could catch the key word in the above sentence: "CATCH". Yes Keith, election officials caught the problem and corrected it. And guess what? With no impact on the final results.

Look, I have no problem with a complete investigation into vote reporting, counting or casting irregularities. They should and, no doubt, will be looked into. What I do have a problem with is a host of a cable news show checking his objectivity at the door and embarking on a clearly partisan crusade to cast doubt on the legitimacy of last Tuesday's elections. If he has some solid evidence of fraud, lets hear it. If not, I would appreciate it if Olbermann would stop pretending he was Oliver Stone. After all, Halloween was two weeks ago.

ABC News Takes a Crack...

At the voter fraud conspiracy theories. ABC pretty much debunks them all.

Impact quote concerning the vote reporting problems in Cuyahoga county:

In the battleground state of Ohio, where conspiracy theories abound, a Web site for Cuyahoga County seemed to show more votes than voters in some precincts.

The county's Web site was confusing — it lumped several precincts' absentee ballots together and then counted them several times, for each precinct. But those were glitches in vote-reporting — not vote-counting. The "phantom" voters who mysteriously appeared and voted for Bush in the county — which voted overwhelmingly for Kerry — did not exist other than in the imagination of Democrats upset about Kerry's loss.

This afternoon, the Web site that first raised the questions about the Cuyahoga votes took it all back. "OK," wrote the Webmeister at "Americans 4 America," "finally had a chance to figure this out. I apologize for any anxiety that went along with these numbers. It seems that data is useless without knowing how counties arrived at the
numbers and this was a particularly tricky process."

First Yasser, Now BBC...

What's next? Cuts at National Palestinian Radio?

Looks like the BBC will be undergoing 50% cut in head count. Maybe this is a preemptive cut as one of their biggest sources of funding (Yasser Arafat) may not be around much longer. The good news for BBC staffers that have been let go: I hear Al Jazeera is hiring!

Another Zell Dual?

Move over Chris Matthews, you have company on the Zell Miller dual list. The out-of-his-mind Democratic Senator is now taking on the mope that is Maureen Dowd.

I love this line:

"The more Maureen Loud [sic] gets on 'Meet the Press' and writes those columns, the redder these states get. I mean, they don't want some high brow hussy from New York City explaining to them that they're idiots and telling them that they're stupid."

That's a Mighty Short Limb Your Standing On Keith...

Either MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has a head start on the "story of the century" or (as I suspect) he's on another one of his self aggrandizing ego trips.

Both on his sometimes funny daily "Countdown" show on MSNBC and his "Blog", Olbermann has been peddling the theory that the election, especially in Ohio and Florida, was somehow stolen by the Republicans. Olbermann bases his theory on the fact that results in several counties in the two states show Republican support that is much greater than the numbers of registered Republicans in area and, in a couple of cases, vote total irregularities that resulted in more cast votes in a particular county than actual registered voters.

Many of Olbermann's cited examples have been explained through an examination of voting trends in particular counties - Yale Free Press does a good job ripping apart Keith's Florida theory - and I have no doubt the rest of his examples will receive a similar fate. That really isn't the issue here. The real question I have is what is the point of Olbermann's show in the first place?

Is his "Countdown" show supposed to a light-hearted look at the news? Kind of a more serious version of the "Daily Show? If so, he has a long way to go to match Jon Stewart. Or, as I suspect is probably the case in Olbermann's mind, is the show a vehicle for the host to show off his hard news talents?

It is my suspicion that Olbermann fashions himself as a future Brian Williams, a hard-news anchor with a future in network news, and he is searching "high and low" for that one great story that will make his career. At this point in time he is pinning his hopes on the "stolen election" story and it looks like he is going to run with it down to the bitter end. He has already dedicated significant portions of his last two shows to this issue, complete with bringing in guests (like Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford) to help explain to the audience just how important this issue is to the future of the country and he promises to continue to do so throughout the week.

Well, good luck Keith. You are going to need it. If, as I suspect, this story blows up in your face, you will be viewed by NBC more as the next John McEnroe or Dennis Miller (and no doubt assigned to the death valley that is CNBC) than the next Tom Brokaw. In end, Keith may wish he never left his ESPN gig.

UPDATE: Salon, not your typical right-wing rag, does a pretty good job putting to rest Olbermann's "stolen election" theory. We'll see what Keith reports on tonight. I hear he is going to look into how a state the size of Utah can contain only 25% Democrats!

I'm Back

Back from Ohio and out from under the mountain of work that was waiting for me. Regular blogging will resume shortly.