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Keith Olbermann sat down with David Letterman this Tuesday to give his side of the not-entirely-unexpected firing from Current TV. I don't think Keith Olbermann did himself any favors with the $10 million chandelier reference, but he did give us a bit of insight into his take on everything from problems with the set, to his drivers not being paid for by the network, to why he had some problems appearing on the air and problems with losing his voice.

Obviously, Olbermann will present his side as contritely as possible that he tried to make it work, but he missed a whole lot of days besides the ones he addressed here. And I think it's a bit ridiculous to claim that he didn't know before he signed that Current had limited viewing access across the country and much lower budgets than the networks he had previously been on.

I regret the loss of both his MSNBC and Current TV shows, mainly because he was one of the few willing to speak out about the excesses of the Bush administration years ago and risk getting fired or publicly shamed. He did it anyway when we sorely needed not just Keith, but others speaking out in the same manner. This site was always very supportive of his show and he had been generous to us as well, even acknowledging C&L in one of his books.

That said, he was famous for being prickly and difficult to work with and work for. I'm not so sure how much of a chance he was willing to give Gore's network, nor how much Gore and the others there let him down with promises not kept of production standards and professionalism. It's sad that what looked to be another potential news network not governed by right wing corporate talking points is going through this sort of turmoil. Hearing about all of it aggravates me just as badly as when I found out about the problems with Air America.

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Dorli Rainey, the elderly woman in the now iconic picture by Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer Joshua Trujillo, tells Keith Olbermann "I feel great. I feel so energized. It's so amazing the effect a little pepper spray can have on you."

Eighty-four-year-old activist Dorli Rainey tells Keith about her experience getting pepper-sprayed by the police during an Occupy Seattle demonstration and the need to take action and spread the word of the Occupy movement. She cites the advice of the late Catholic nun and activist Jackie Hudson to “take one more step out of your comfort zone” as an inspiration, saying, “It would be so easy to say, ‘Well I’m going to retire, I’m going to sit around, watch television or eat bonbons,’ but somebody’s got to keep ’em awake and let ’em know what is really going on in this world.”

In a Special Comment, Keith contextualizes Mayor Bloomberg’s actions against Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park and how they have – unintentionally – vaulted the movement from a local nuisance to a global platform for the disenfranchised.

Scott Campbell, a participant in the Occupy Oakland movement, describes the unprovoked police attack that left him severely wounded. “There was absolutely no warning whatsoever,” says Campbell.

via MercuryNews.com/Oakland Tribune

A video clip is raising new questions about whether police used excessive force against Occupy Oakland participants during the fracas after last week's general strike.

The video by Scott Campbell, 30, of Oakland, shows a line of riot-gear-clad officers at Frank Ogawa Plaza's north end, near the foot of San Pablo Avenue. Campbell said the video was made shortly before 1 a.m.

Thursday, around the time that police moved in after other protesters broke into and defaced a nearby building and erected and set fire to barricades in the street.

Campbell, holding the camera, moves slowly to his right, filming the line; Campbell is heard twice asking, "Is this OK?"

"When I was approaching the line, an officer told me to stop and step back, so I stepped back 5 or 10 feet and started filming, and I asked if that was OK," he explained Monday.

He said there was no reply until an officer raised a weapon and fired, striking him in the upper right thigh with a nonlethal projectile; the video ends with his crying out in pain.
...

Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminal justice professor who's an expert in police decision-making and use of force, said the video left him "astonished, amazed and embarrassed."

"Unless there's something we don't know, that's one of the most outrageous uses of a firearm that I've ever seen," he said. "Unless there's a threat that you can't see in the video, that just looks like absolute punishment, which is the worst type of excessive force."

The YouTube video has now been viewed over 100,000 times.

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Keith Olbermann bestowed the rare honor of naming Pima County GOP Chairman Mike Shaw the Worst Person in the World for the second night in a row over his decision to raffle off a Glock handgun, the same kind of weapon that was used to shoot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ).

On Thursday night Olbermann called Shaw a 'Human-Shaped Pile of Feces'.

Hudson Valley Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) was runner-up for her own foolishness, recounted here by the Times Herald-Record.

Only days after a record-setting storm destroyed her district, Rep. Nan Hayworth and her House colleagues threatened to withhold disaster money if lawmakers don't cut additional spending from the federal budget.

"We're facing a natural disaster in the middle of an economic disaster," Hayworth said Wednesday. "Certainly, the challenges we face with the national budget have not changed."

Hayworth, R-Mount Kisco, said she would only vote to replenish the federal disaster fund if new spending was offset by budget cuts. She said those cuts should come from "non-defense discretionary spending." Hayworth likened her position to a family skipping vacation if it was overwhelmed by bills.

"We have to control spending," she said. "There's no question about it."

Right. In times of disaster we all need to tighten our belts. Gotcha, Nan.

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New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, today on Keith Olbermann's Countdown spared no punches in his scathing criticism of the debt deal and the misguided thinking behind it. Despite the silly and stupid comment by Newt Gingrich on the O'Reilly show the other night ("This is a Paul Krugman presidency"), it seems unlikely Krugman will be getting any White House invitations in the near future.

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Rupert Murdoch's News International announced Thursday that the British tabloid News of the World was shutting down, but Vanity Fair contributor Michael Wolff says the phone hacking scandal may not end there.

"Hacking, listening to your voicemail messages was for a period, a rather long period, a tabloid tool," Wolff told Current's Keith Olbermann Wednesday. "It was like a typewriter. Everybody in the newsroom did it and they did it to everybody who the news touched."

"Is there any reason to assume or that we are correct in assuming that nobody in the Murdoch companies would have done that [in the U.S.]?" Olbermann asked.

"I think it's the next question," Wolff said. "So it's just now, the questions are just kind of dawning on everyone. In my newsroom today, I said, 'Hey, what happened? They must -- could they have done it here? Literally, can you do it here? Can you hack someone's phone here? Is there a difference?'"

"And there is not a difference," he explained.

The Independent revealed in February that Murdoch's most read British tabloid, The Sun, was also being investigated for phone hacking.

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Bill O'Reilly's controversial appearance on The View Thursday gave MSNBC's Keith Olbermann just the excuse he needed to let loose on the conservative pundit.

O'Reilly may have become Thursday's most talked about story after his comments caused two hosts of ABC's popular daytime show to walk off the set.

The Associated Press detailed the walk off:

Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walked off the stage of "The View" during an argument with Bill O'Reilly over the proposed Islamic center near the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The women objected to the Fox News Channel host saying that "Muslims killed us on 9/11."

Olbermann, who has a longstanding feud with O'Reilly, couldn't let the opportunity pass without using his "Worst Person in the World" segment to call out the Fox News host.

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Comedian Lewis Black has a solution for dealing with the oil company responsible for spilling millions of barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Black believes the U.S. should put the same effort in to plugging the leak and cleaning up the spill that was put into attacking the oil-rich country of Iraq.

"I have a theory I've been postulating and I think you'll like this," Black told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann Wednesday.

"We went into Iraq because there was supposedly these nuclear weapons there. Now -- and that we might get attacked. Might. Now, we have BP, which is a multinational corporation, and they act like countries. I mean they basically are countries.," said Black.

"They, as far as I can tell, are attacking us with oil. And so I propose we declare war and invade them," Black suggested.

"They've got no standing army. We take over their buildings. We put the workers, their folks in internment camps and we just get their checks and do what we can with the money to solve the problem down there," Black said.

While outlandish, Black is not the first comedian to wonder why the U.S. could put so much effort into attacking Iraq but appears helpless when it comes to the BP spill. Comedy Central's Jon Stewart had similar thoughts Tuesday.

"It cannot be that the only thing our government is good for anymore is war. We have to at some point use the same urgency and preparedness that we brought to taking over other country's oil to cleaning up our own," said Stewart.

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Keith talks to Dan Savage about Carrie Prejean wanna' be Miss Beverly Hills Lauren Ashley's statement that "God wants gays put to death". Dan talks about how dangerous this type of over heated rhetoric is because it gives justification for others to gay bash as well and can unfortunately as we all know too well lead to violence.

Dan asks here as he did in his blog what other parts of the Bible these people would like to take literally:

The same God that allegedly scribbled out that stern warning for the gays—a God who wishes us only the best!—also condemned to death all young women who aren't virgins on their wedding nights. So a follow-up question for Miss Beverly Hills: Are you a virgin? If not, should you be put to death? And a former Miss California—Carrie Prejean—isn't a virgin. Should she be put to death? Would you like to cast the first stone?