Olbermann

Countdown: Palin Wants To Help Special Needs Kids By Doing Away With Science

By Nicole Belle Saturday Oct 25, 2008 9:00am

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Oh, the gaffe-a-minute, never-vet-any-campaign-speech joy of the McCain campaign. Sarah Palin debuted both a new set of glasses and a new talking point about the way that the McCain/Palin administration will be smarter about the way government funds important programs:

Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? [snip] You've heard about some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

Apparently, Palin isn't aware of the kind of research done with fruit flies. Pharyngula:

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important.

In fact, irony of all ironies, fruit fly research has actually aided in understanding a genetic component or predisposition towards autism.

Olbermann: The point of the war in Iraq is to makre sure their is war

Olbermann: The point of the war in Iraq is to make sure there is war

By Beverly Davis

When Keith Olbermann offered an overview on Wednesday of recent Bush administration scandals, he touched on the failure to protect whistleblowers and the refusal to reappoint the one member of the Federal Election Commission who spoke out against John McCain’s attempt to opt out of federal campaign financing after using that financing as a loan guarantee.

But Olbermann’s harshest comments were directed against Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, whom Olbermann described as “one of the administration’s consulting dumbasses, who got us into the quagmire in Iraq and is now pushing hard for a twin disaster in Iran.”

Boot insisted in an online debate Tuesday that the surge has worked because “civilian deaths were down more than 80%, US deaths more than 60%, between September 2006 and March 2008.”

However, Boot also argued in the Wall Street Journal on Monday that the jump in American fatalities in April “could be a sign that tough combat is under way that will lead to the enemy’s defeat and the creation of a more peaceful environment in the future.”

“And there it is, in all its beautiful, elliptical, symmetrical, asinine Bushian glory,” Olbermann concluded.

“If fewer Americans die in Iraq, that’s because the surge is working. If more Americans die in Iraq, that’s also because the surge is working. And if the surge is working, the troops have to stay longer to solidify its gains. And if the surge isn’t working, the troops have to stay longer to make sure it starts working.”

“And the point of the war in Iraq is to make sure there is a war in Iraq.”

This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast May 7, 2008.

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Olbermann FISA Segment: - 'Insidious Encroachment' & 'Spinelessness'

Olbermann FISA Segment: - 'Insidious Encroachment' & 'Spinelessness'

Olbermann: 'Sorry That's Classified and Other Lame Excuses'

Olbermann: 'Sorry That's Classified and Other Lame Excuses'

Olbermann

Olbermann slams Bush after Hillary blamed for losing Iraq

07/19/2007 @ 8:56 pm

Filed by David Edwards and Josh Catone

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann began tonight's Countdown program with a special comment. The unusual move to open his show with the comment, which is almost always reserved for the closing of the program, added gravity to his words.

"It is one of the great, dark, evil lessons of history," begins Olbermann, "that a country, a government, a military machine can screw up a war seven ways to Sunday; it can get thousands of its people killed; it can risk the safety of its own citizens; it can destroy the fabric of its nation; but as long as it can identify a scapegoat, it can regain, or even gain, power."

The Bush administration, says Olbermann, has found its scapegoat for Iraq in presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). Olbermann referred to a letter Pentagon number two Eric Edelman sent to Clinton admonishing her for calling for a withdrawal in Iraq.

"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq," wrote Edelman, "much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia."

A spokesman for Clinton called Edelman's letter "outrageous and dangerous," which Olbermann feels "may actually understate the risk the Edelman letter poses to our way of life."

By choosing Hillary Clinton as his scapegoat, says Olbermann, Bush has consigned himself to "that remarkably small group of Americans whom Americans can not forgive. Those who have sold this country out, and who have willingly declared their enmity to the people, at whose pleasure they supposedly serve."

"A scapegoat, sir, might be forgivable," Olbermann continued, addressing President Bush, "if you had not just happened to choose a prospective presidential nominee from the opposition party."

Olbermann concludes that the Bush contention that withdrawal is abandonment is fallacious and that everyone already knows that the US is leaving Iraq, even if it means impeaching the president to do it.

The following video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast on July 19.

Olbermann: Bush, Cheney should resign.

Olbermann: Bush, Cheney should resign.

In an extended Special Comment tonight, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann called on President Bush and Vice President Cheney to resign. He concludes his commentary with this:

We of this time–and our leaders in Congress, of both parties–must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach–get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.

For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone–anyone–about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

Watch a portion: