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Keith's Special Comment on the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and domestic terrorism.

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. We need to put the guns down. Just as importantly we need to put the gun metaphors away and permanently.

Left, right, middle - politicians and citizens - sane and insane. This morning in Arizona, this age in which this country would accept "targeting" of political opponents and putting bullseyes over their faces and of the dangerous blurring between political rallies and gun shows, ended.

This morning in Arizona, this time of the ever-escalating, borderline-ecstatic invocation of violence in fact or in fantasy in our political discourse, closed. It is essential tonight not to demand revenge, but to demand justice; to insist not upon payback against those politicians and commentators who have so irresponsibly brought us to this time of domestic terrorism, but to work to change the minds of them and their supporters - or if those minds tonight are too closed, or if those minds tonight are too unmoved, or if those minds tonight are too triumphant, to make sure by peaceful means that those politicians and commentators and supporters have no further place in our system of government.

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Via the inimitable Jon Ralston:

The Social Security spot at right was produced by some folks in the Sharron Angle for U.S. Senate campaign but never aired, as some of the "DC handlers" managed to kill it. I can't imagine why.

I also wonder why there is no laugh track....

Or as one person put it at Politico in one of the better lines I've seen lately:

It's like Night of the Living Dead crossed with Sponge Bob.

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From The Last Word: Lawrence O'Donnell explains the right and wrong way to give a concession speech, with examples from this year's mid-term elections.

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Fox News's lame excuse for a media watchdog show decided to take after Joy Behar for her comments about Sharron Angle, and Keith Olbermann for his Special Comment on the "Tea Party". The best they could come up with to go after "left wing meanie" Olbermann, he's "unhinged" and making things up. Given Fox's promotion of the astroturf "Tea Party" movement, I didn't expect much better from them.

Keith Olbermann might get over the top with the tone of his segments like this Special Comment, but he's also got the facts on his side whether you like the tone or not. You'll notice they didn't try to actually debunk anything he said but just attacked him personally as being "unhinged" instead.

Scott: There are lots of examples S. E. of liberal media figures such as Keith Olbermann taking shots at conservative politicians. He rants about the Tea Party. Take a listen to this.

[…]

S. E. is he really that unhinged or is he just making that up for comic effect?

Cupp: Well I think that the five of us at this table were the only people not implicated in that rant. He was really going after, I mean... generations of people. I think he's unhinged. I've been watching Chris Matthews take a similar kind of stance against Sarah Palin and tea partiers. I mean there's a reason why the liberal outlets are talking about conservatives. You will get New York Magazine and Sarah Palin, Newsweek has John Boehner, they're not talking about the left because they can't, so they're going after these sort of boogie men... on the right.

Uh... no S.E., they're going after them because they're nut jobs. Keith Olbermann spent the better part of twenty minutes pointing out just what these people's opinions are and why they're dangerous for our democracy and why they are on the far right fringe of the Republican party with what they're campaigning on, but you all decided to ignore that. Bravo.

And I'm not about to defend Behar's crap since it's not acceptable to be calling someone a b**ch on the air whether you agree with them or not. I don't care for Angle and I think she's an extremist, she's over the top with her rhetoric and dangerous and I don't think she's fit to serve in the US Senate. I don't think you have to be calling her the b-word to make that point. All Behar did is give Fox an excuse to lump her in with anyone they could come up with to prove all liberals or Democrats are evil just like Coulter did on Hannity's show last week.

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It looks like someone is pushing to get The Young Turks Cenk Uygur his own show on MSNBC. Cenk gave the daily rant segment on The Dylan Ratigan Show and went after "Tea Partiers" Ken Buck, Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle for their absurdly on the issue of separation of church and state.

As Cenk pointed out, these wingers are more than happy to push their version of Christianity on the rest of us and want their religion pushed into our politics, but none of them would be too happy if we had a state sponsored religion, and that religion turned out to be Islam or Mormonism.

Ratigan's show is all over the map with him going between ranting about, and rightfully so the mess that Wall Street has left this country in and the fact that our government hasn't done enough yet to reign them in to bringing on right wingers like Tom Coburn and pretending that he's some rational person that isn't part of the problem with the way our Senate has been functioning, or not functioning and obstructing would be a better description, that deserves to be listened to.

Ratigan almost made up for having on the extremely unfunny P.J. O'Rourke on to tell people not to come out and vote just before Cenk came on. I guess we'll find out before long if he does the same for Cenk Uygur as Keith Olbermann did for Rachel Maddow and helps him get a permanent spot on MSNBC.

As always, Jon Ralston at the Las Vegas Sun has the sordid details:

As more of the video surfaces from GOP Senate nominee Sharron Angle's meeting last week with Rancho High School's Hispanic kids, the more bizarre it gets. Elsewhere on this blog, I have posted the video of her claiming an infamous still she and Louisiana Sen. David Vitter used in an ad, an incendiary image of Hispanic thugs, may not have been an image of Hispanics. That was nutty enough. But at the same meeting, according to video I have obtained and taken by one of the Hispanic students, she said some of the kids looked more Asian.

Strange? You be the judge.

SHARRON ANGLE: "So that’s what we want is a secure and sovereign nation and, you know, I don’t know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me. I don’t know that. [Note: it's the Hispanic Student Union. The whole room is Hispanic teenagers.] What we know, what we know about ourselves is that we are a melting pot in this country. My grandchildren are evidence of that. I’m evidence of that. I’ve been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly."

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican candidate Sharron Angle squared off for their first debate tonight in Las Vegas, and one of the questions was on the issue of healthcare. Sharron Angle was asked by the moderator "Is there anything you think health insurance companies should be forced to cover?"

Angle hedged and said that "Forcing someone to buy something that they don't need is not the way to solve the problem" which of course didn't answer the moderator's question. When pressed again on whether there is anything at all the insurance companies should be forced to cover Angle replied.

I think that what we have here is a choice between the free market and Americanism. America is about choices and we need to allow people to have those choices. The free market will weed out those companies that don't offer as many choices and don't have a cost effective system. Let the people decide where they want to buy their insurance. You don't have to force them to buy anything and you don't have to force anyone to offer a product that no one wants.

Moderator: Okay, so no insurance mandates?

From reading some other accounts of the debate, I believe he got a nod in the affirmative.

Harry Reid rightfully pointed out that insurance companies don't "do anything out of the goodness of their hearts" and noted how horribly the premiums for most Americans were going through the roof if the government continued to sit by and do nothing.

This debate was painful to watch. Angle was terrible and Reid was so bad as well he didn't take advantage of it. This portion alone should have been like shooting fish in a barrel and would have been for someone with some better debating skills than Reid has. I'm sure most of the readers of this blog could come up with about a hundred better and more sharp and concise responses that would resonate with the public to Angle's nonsense than Reid did.

Sharron Angle's "free market solutions" boil down to people being "free" to have the insurance companies let them die because they'd rather line their CEO's pockets and pay their stock holders than cover the policies of the saps who paid into them when they actually get sick.

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Nothing like more fearmongering from Republicans and pushing the myth that we need to turn the Social Security trust fund over to Wall Street in order to "save it", but that's what we heard from Sharron Angle during her debate in Las Vegas with Harry Reid.

The moderator asks Reid about the Social Security trust fund and Angle’s claim that Reid helped to raid the fund to offset the deficit. Reid defended his position on Social Security and talked about fighting against George Bush’s attempt to privatize it and also pointed out that the fund is solvent for the next thirty five or forty years and after that even if they don’t do something to fix it, the short fall would be about fifteen or twenty percent.

Reid asked to stop the fear mongering over Social Security and whether those T-bills would be paid back or not. Here was Angle's response.

Man up Harry Reid. You need to understand that we have a problem with Social Security. That problem was created because of government taking that money out of the Social Security trust fund. In 1990 you said it was stealing to use Social Security for anything but Social Security and then you voted to take that Social Security money into the general fund where it leads to general use for generally anything.

When you did that you left IOUs there, the special Treasury bonds that are kept in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg West Virginia. What we need to do is keep our promises to our senior citizens by putting the money back in the trust fund and going forward allowing our workers to have the option of a personalized Social Security retirement plan that becomes an asset plan to them just like your THRIFT savings plan is an asset to you. If it’s good enough for you, it should be good enough for the rest of us.

I'm still trying to figure out what "vote" she's talking about, because the money does not go into the general fund whether they've borrowed against it or not as noted in the link below, and as FDR's grandson pointed out back in August. Angle appeared to be reading straight from the writings of Dr. Allen Smith who claims that the trust fund has been "embezzled" because the politicians have allowed the funds to be borrowed against. While I agree that they should not have borrowed against those funds, and I think they should be paid back, Sharron Angle's "solution" of privatization is utterly ridiculous. You notice that she also says that the money need to be "put back" into the fund to take care of seniors, but doesn't say where that money should come from.

Listening to the doublespeak out of this woman is enough to give a person whiplash, but she's not the only one doing this. She was simply reading straight out of the Republican playbook. They all hate Social Security and always have and want to dismantle it. They'd get rid of it for seniors and everyone else who is collecting those benefits now except they know they'd be run out of town on a rail if they tried.

From the Social Security government web site and their myths and misinformation about Social Security.

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"To address the tragic shortage in stock photos of scary minorities, Stephen [Colbert] starts his own fear-based photo licensing service." Features campaign ads by Sharron Angle in Nevada and David Vitter in Lousiana using the same scary illegal aliens.

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The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur takes on the "Tea Party" hypocrites who are trashing the government for helping others while themselves being more than willing to take those government handouts for their own, in The Dylan Ratigan show's daily rant segment.

There's Michele Bachmann and her farm subsidies. -- A guest poster followup: Michele Bachmann did vote to protect farm subsidies for wealthy recipients.

Joe Miller and his wife's unemployment benefits -- Despite Joe Miller Calling Federal Aid Unconstitutional, His Wife Received Unemployment Benefits.

Joe Miller and his farm subsidies -- Joe Miller Admits Reaping Federal Farm Subsidies Despite Railing Against Taking Government Funds.

Ron Johnson's HUD grant -- Ron Johnson's Latest Hypocrisy on Government Assistance: His Own Job Was Created by a Government Grant

And last but not least, Sharron Angle's government health care -- Sharron Angle And Her Husband Receive Government Health Care .