Lawrence O’Donnell

A Celebratory Day In The Cable Media World: MSNBC 15th Anniversary And Fox News Channel-Rupert Murdoch Crisis!

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Today, 15 years ago, MSNBC went online as the competitor of CNN, which had begun June 1, 1980. Within a few months, on October 7, Fox News Channel came along as a third competitor in the 24 hour news channel industry!

MSNBC has gone through rough times over its 15 years, but now it is thriving by having emerged as the strong progressive news channel, compared to the moderate approach of CNN and the right wing conservative views of Fox News Channel.

MSNBC has become a station with outstanding talk show hosts, including Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell, Rachel Maddow, and Ed Schultz, as well as outstanding coverage during the day by other anchor people.

It is a source of much what the author writes about, and it gives us a progressive view of events, which is sorely needed, so Happy 15th to MSNBC!

At the same time, Fox News Channel has misled, lied, deceived, propagandized, and become a Republican propaganda channel, including hiring many of the Republican Presidential field at some point of time.

Fox News Channel has NEVER been willing to cover the news fairly, and has made life miserable for Barack Obama, and has convinced an ignorant portion of the population to believe their myths, half truths, and distortions!

Its talk show hosts are disgraceful, having included Glenn Beck in the recent past, and still including Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, along with a whole group of unsavory characters who have questionable ethics, but end up on Fox News Channel!

Their employer, Rupert Murdoch, known world wide as one of the most despicable people in the news business, has now become involved in a hacking scandal that threatens to bring him and his news corporation to their knees, symbolically!

Nothing would be more contributing to the future of journalism than to have the downfall of Rupert Murdoch and Fox News Channel, but in reality, that is not likely! That channel is refusing to report the scandal in detail, part of their “managed” and distorted news coverage, figuring that their audience might remain unaware because they lean so much on the manipulated manner of news reporting on their channel!

Even if Fox News Channel survives, seeing Rupert Murdoch and the channel squirm is victory in itself!

Revelation In Georgia: Illegal Immigrants Needed For Agricultural Work Despite Tough Law Passed Against Them!

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More states are passing strict laws on illegal immigration, similar to Arizona’s law, which will be litigated by the Supreme Court in its next term.

Georgia is one of those attempting to crack down on illegal immigration in a tough manner, but it has now been discovered that this is creating a tremendous shortage of available workers for the agricultural crop, including the famous Georgia peaches!

It turns out that it is very hard to find workers to do agricultural work, which is back breaking and low paying and requires dealing with working outside in the hot Georgia sun all day! It is not a job for those who wish to have comfortable and decent paying work! It is also a skill to know how to do the work efficiently and speedily, and these illegal immigrants do it well and without complaint, since they are willing to work harder for lower pay than any of us!

So it means that suddenly we may not see fruits and vegetables get to market, and maybe we will have to pay more for such items by paying higher wages to those Americans who might be willing to subject themselves to the work conditions, but it will not be easy to find such individuals!

We are not about to see a rush to volunteer for such jobs, even in a time of high unemployment, as this is not the kind of work that most people born in America can conceptualize themselves doing day after day for 10-12 hours a day!

So it is a fact, hard for many to accept, that discriminating against illegal immigrants, instead of working to make them legal and contributing citizens of this nation, is really spiting ourselves to get satisfaction that we are going after those “inferior” people who make our lives better by picking our agricultural crops, doing our lawns, cleaning our homes, taking care of our children, and a myriad of other difficult jobs that we take for granted as we go about our lives thinking we are, somehow, better than them!

As Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC has said, immigration has been the lifeblood of our nation, and we only hurt ourselves if we strike out against those who are really, what we were through our ancestors generations ago, hated and despised, whether legal or illegal!

Changes Coming In Cable And Television News!

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As we enter the second half of 2011, and the Presidential race becomes ever more center stage, Fox News Channel is making every effort to legitimize itself as “mainstream”, just as Jon Stewart went after Fox News Channel on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace last week, as not being accurate or responsible in its coverage of politics and news!

Having “rescued” liberal commentator Juan Williams, after he was summarily fired by National Public Radio, with a reported $2 million a year five year contract, Fox News then went to hire CNN morning anchor John Roberts to be a national correspondent, and former Democratic Senator Evan Bayh to be a political commentator.

Now they have hired CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry to be their White House correspondent, and of course, for the past few years, they have had former CNN morning anchor Bill Hemmer on their station.

Will it work, to make Fox News Channel seem “mainstream”? With the leaving of Glenn Beck from his every weekday show through joint agreement, it might have some effect, although Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, John Stossel, Greta Van Susteren, Brit Hume, Bill Kristol, Liz Cheney, et al, make one wonder if that is possible!

Meanwhile, Keith Olbermann, who had a “divorce” from MSNBC, has now revived his “Countdown” show, following a similar format, on former Vice President Al Gore’s independent station, Current TV. For those who enjoyed his incisive coverage of politics, it is a welcome return, but the question is whether he can “steal’ the audience of MSNBC and Lawrence O’Donnell at the same hour, along with Eliot Spitzer on CNN. As it turns out, Current TV replays Olbermann’s show EIGHT times over the 24 hour cycle, so in theory, one can watch Spitzer, see O’Donnell in rerun at 11 pm, and then watch Olbermann at any three hour cycle up through dinner time the next day!

Additionally, Norah O’Donnell of MSNBC and NBC, who had been a chief Washington correspondent, is now moving to CBS as their White House correspondent. Always pleasant and appealing in her manner of reporting and commenting, CBS has staged a major coup by gaining her employment!

So cable news and TV news in general has become ever more personality driven, and adds interest to the coverage of major political events!

Should America Care If Sarah Palin Runs For President? NO!

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We are in the silly season again, but not it is not Donald Trump playing games with us about running for President. Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC correctly predicted early on that Trump would NOT run for President, and that lots of media time was being wasted on him!

Instead, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who has never finished any political office she was appointed or elected to, is playing games with the American people, announcing a bus tour of historic sites in the Northeast, including Antietam, Gettysburg, Philadelphia and ending up in New Hampshire, the site of the first primary in the Presidential Election of 2012.

Lawrence O’Donnell has again told us to stop wasting our time speculating about Palin, as he says, just like Trump, she will NOT run for President in the end. This is excellent advice from a wise commentator, and makes total sense.

As the author has stated in earlier entries on this blog, Palin does not have the intellectual capacity to take on the burdens of becoming President, and it is likely that were she to occupy the Oval Office, the country would be put into great danger, and she might very well get up and leave suddenly, fulfilling her life story of quitting when things get tough or the criticism becomes heavy.

This woman is a mental case, who should never have been given a platform by John McCain in 2008. She is mediocrity at its worst, an example of an ignorant, stupid, petty, lazy woman, with a sense of entitlement, who exploits everyone around her, as shown by two recent books about her.

As O’Donnell stated, if Fox News Channel really believed Sarah Palin was planning to run, they would have removed her from the channel, as they did with Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, but failed to do with Mike Huckabee, who ended up not running, and Palin. She is not about to give up a regular network show and the money that she makes doing it, and getting lots of exposure to boot, which she craves.

Also, she can make speeches all over the place and have a reality television show and publish two books, and become wealthy in just a few years, enough to afford a mansion in Arizona, meaning the “good life”!

Why would she want to subject her family to the exposure that she herself has condemned as unfair to their happiness and privacy?

Why would she wish to run and face defeat and repudiation, and lose some of her magic hold on the one third of the nation which adores her?

If she runs and loses the nomination, she is damaged goods, and will never have the same allure as someone who MIGHT run!

Why would she run when she has shown she is extremely sensitive to criticism or analysis, and refuses to be interviewed by the mainstream media?

Would she wish to be blamed for the destruction of the Republican Party, and go down in history as having caused its demise?

By hinting she might run, she can exploit the situation and make loads of money and get attention, but eventually, just as with Trump, she will decide that she has milked it for all it is worth, and it is time to trim her sails and go back to the “good life” John McCain has given her by putting her on the map of politics!

It is clear that Sarah Palin will NOT run, but if she does, she will destroy the Republican Party, and be condemned in history for what she has done! Don’t hold your breath that she is running, because you will die first!

Orly Taitz Should Be Prosecuted For Defamation Of Character Of President Obama, AndThen Be Put Under Psychiatric Evaluation!!

Ronald 2 Comments

Orly Taitz, the originator of the “Birther” conspiracy theory regarding President Barack Obama’s location of his birth, has refused to apologize for her lies and deceit, even after the original birth certificate was displayed yesterday at the request of the President of the United States!

She was invited to speak on Lawrence O’Donnell’s LAST WORD show on MSNBC, and instead “filibustered” the subject, refusing to answer how she felt about the evidence, and instead over talking O’Donnell and stating she was bringing a lawsuit over the President’s Selective Service draft registration information required for all males at age 18!

She was totally obnoxious and insulting, and to see Lawrence O’Donnell, a real gentleman on his talk show, become furious at her sick mind and behavior, was quite an experience for the author!

This is a woman born in the old Soviet Union, allowed to migrate to this nation in 1987, having the opportunity to become a lawyer and a dentist in California, and instead of appreciating the opportunities this nation has given her, she would rather trash our President, give him no respect or dignity, and launch frivolous lawsuits, cluttering up the courts with her sick, depraved nonsense based on a hallucinatory mind and no common decency!

There is nothing else that President Obama can do about this distraction, but it is time for good Americans who are disgusted by this poisonous promotion of racism and hate to launch a civil lawsuit against Orly Taitz, with the intention of making her pay for defamation of character, for libel and slander, leading to her impoverishment financially!

And then, the woman, by stirring passions in such an outrageous, deceptive manner, should be put under psychiatric care as a detriment to civil society and common decency!

Freedom of speech does not mean one can shout fire in a crowded theater and not be held responsible civilly for one”s reckless behavior! This is not calling for criminal indictment, but rather civil indictment and conviction, and the ruling of a court that this disgraceful human being be required to have psychiatric evaluation and care!

Tim Pawlenty Gets A Boost In The GOP Presidential Race

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Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has been seen as a insignificant factor in the Republican Presidential race, having far less voter recognition than his potential major opponents–Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour and Rick Santorum.

But several things have occurred which improve his chances of being a serious candidate:

Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, both regional Midwestern potential candidates, decided not to run for President, giving him a boost in Iowa, the first measure of party support on February 6, 2012.

Rumors are flying that Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin may not run for President, due to the lucrative positions they have with Fox News Channel, plus other money making activities for Palin.

All of the other major Presidential possibilities, and even some of the minor ones, have “skeletons in the closet”, major negatives that can hurt them, such as:

Mitt Romney–He is seen as having promoted a health care plan in Massachusetts similar to what President Obama was able to achieve nationally in 2010. Also, he is seen by many as secretly a northeastern liberal in his background, and being a Mormon hurts him with evangelical Christians. Plus he had one go around already and lost to John McCain.

Mike Huckabee–He has had one go around already, is seen as a big spender during his years as Governor of Arkansas, and may not want to give up the lucrative income he has recently enjoyed for the first time in his life. Plus he seems concerned with the costs of running for President against President Obama, who will probably have a billion dollar campaign fund.

Sarah Palin–She has not developed a real set of plans to run, may not want to give up her lucrative income to run, and is actually not running well in many polls, since she is seen as shallow, and more of a cult figure than a serious Presidential possibility.

Newt Gingrich–He has a lot of personal life scandals in his past, has not been in public office for 14 years by 2012, and is very divisive in his rhetoric, making him less appealing to many who think of him as a “flame thrower”.

Haley Barbour–He has made major blunders with his lack of understanding and miscues about the civil rights movement in his home state of Mississippi in the 1960s, plus the question exists whether someone from the deep South can appeal to the nation at large.

Rick Santorum–He has the problem of a massive Senate defeat for reelection in 2006, and his being best remembered for his “man-dog” statement in opposing gay rights and gay marriage. He is not taken very seriously as a Presidential candidate by anyone in top leadership of the GOP.

Other candidates also have major problems if they decide to run.

Jon Huntsman–He has a background as a moderate in the party, which is not a plus. Plus he was Barack Obama’s Ambassador to China, which could be harmful, and being a Mormon, as Romney is, is probably a major minus as well.

Michele Bachmann–The Congresswoman from Minnesota may appeal to the Tea Party and could be a rival of fellow Minnesotan Pawlenty, but it is hard to imagine that her loose mouth and extremist image would give her a serious chance for the nomination. Plus being a Congresswoman is a difficult challenge for the Presidency, as only one Congressman (James Garfield) ever went directly to the Presidency, and he was dead by assassination six months into his term in 1881.

Ron Paul–He has his followers, and has won the CPAC straw poll twice in a row, but to imagine a libertarian in his late 70s who has tried before for the nomination, and been ridiculed by all others in the party who have run for President, to go on to the nomination is a tremendous long shot, hard to conceive.

Donald Trump–The billionaire businessman is pretty obnoxious and a publicity seeker, and were he to run, his anti Chinese rhetoric and basic belligerence on foreign policy issues would make him a dangerous choice for the Presidency, and since he is not a lovable character personally, it is hard to imagine him going all the way to the nomination.

The above analysis does not mean that none of them can be the nominee, but by comparison , Tim Pawlenty has a real chance to emerge, based on the following factors.

He is from the heartland of the Midwest, the battleground for 2012, and with Mike Pence and John Thune out of the race, that is a boost for Pawlenty.

He first gained notice with John McCain’s campaign for President in 2008, and was on the short list for Vice President, but with McCain’s defeat, it actually was better that he did not win the VP nomination.

Pawlenty is a strong evangelical Christian, and has gained a lot of support from social conservatives and the Tea Party as a result.

He has had real executive experience as Governor of Minnesota for two terms and a total of eight years.

He has been promoted as a candidate with fewer problems, issues, and “skeletons in the closet”, by conservative George Will and MSNBC talk show host Lawrence O’Donnell, giving him, therefore, a bit of a boomlet for the Presidency.

Pawlenty comes across well on television, as a photogenic personality and well spoken, and even at times having a good sense of humor, when he said at the CPAC convention that he had no doubts of Barack Obama’s citizenship, but thought what he believed in sometimes might make one think he was from “outer space!”

This is not an endorsement by this author of Pawlenty by any means, as he strongly prefers Barack Obama to win reelection, but simply a statement that Pawlenty may be the surprise of 2012, and should not be ignored.

Having said that, the author still feels that the best candidate that the GOP could run, overall, would be Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman, but again, Tim Pawlenty will probably be an important part of the equation at the end!

Can The Ideological Divide In America Be Overcome To Avoid Incitement Of More Violence? Highly Doubtful! :(

Ronald 3 Comments

The attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and the murder and wounding of twenty other victims in Tucson, Arizona, should be a wake up call for the country at large, and the political leaders and media personalities in particular, but don’t bet on it! 🙁

The right wing is trying to deflect blame for the use of incendiary language, and trying to compare it to left wing criticisms that may ridicule and mock the opposition.

But it is the specific use of language of the right that is at issue, not the concept of criticism itself!

There can be a healthy, vigorous debate over ideas without promoting rhetoric that calls for revolution, asking citizens to be armed and dangerous, calling for direct action against a tyrannical government, and putting online a map with cross hairs targeting particular congressional district representatives.

There is absolutely no excuse for the rhetoric employed by Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and others on the right.

To compare it to the rhetoric of Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC requires a mentality that makes one wonder about the moral virtues of the listeners. These talk show hosts have never called for any of the above concepts that the right wing is infamous for.

The sad truth is that any possibility of change is remote, and tragically, we are on the road to greater bloodshed and violence on others, including the horrible thought of danger to our national leaders in the executive branch! 🙁

How can we tolerate this, and how can we even think of anyone backing any of these characters in public office, or supporting the continuation of talk show hosts who are only concerned about enriching themselves, and don’t give any concern about public safety or what is good for the national interest? 🙁

The answer is if violence escalates, lawsuits will have to be instituted against right wing talk radio hosts as having contributed to and incited the bloodshed, forcing them off the air and impoverishing them, to shut them up!

Again, speech matters, and if one shouts “fire in a crowded theater”, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, whether they are ordinary citizens, political leaders, or media personalities!

The Conflict Over Barack Obama At MSNBC! :(

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MSNBC is seen as the “liberal” and “progressive” cable channel, the rival of “conservative” and “Republican” Fox News Channel.

But these are not happy days at MSNBC, with a big split developing among the evening talk show hosts, regarding Barack Obama’s tax compromise with the Republican Party!

Chris Matthews fully backs Obama’s compromise as necessary and unavoidable under the circumstances, and makes it clear that there is no real alternative to Obama for progressives!

Lawrence O’Donnell also has concluded much the same thing, so therefore, two of the five talk show hosts stand together in support of Barack Obama!

But Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow are all highly critical of Obama for “caving in” to the Republicans, and demonstrating weakness and a lack of “spine”!

The angry base of progressives and liberals, however, really have no place to go, as there are no strong alternative candidates, although Russ Feingold has been suggested, and today, Howard Dean, a “blast from the past”, has also been mentioned!

The prospects of either of these gentleman or any other, more obscure, candidate stopping Obama dead in his tracks, and keeping the Democratic Party united for the Presidential campaign, is close to zero!

Again, it is not pleasant that this tax deal had to be agreed to, but there is simply no real alternative than to “bite the bullet”, and plan for a major fight on the part of Obama to change the direction of the nation in the Presidential election campaign of 2012!

The fight against the GOP agenda is not over by any means! It is just beginning, and it would be helpful if the three MSNBC hosts understood that, and came back to support of Barack Obama!