With all the talk lately of whether or not certain presidential candidates have passed the "Commander-In-Chief" test, Keith delves into the issue to figure out exactly what are the qualifications for this exam.
Download | play 
Download | play (h/t Heather)
You have ten minutes, then it's pencils down.
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He has become the Left's counterpart to the Right's blowhard, O'Reilly. His swollen ego has become an embarassment.
Pat J @ 1:
He's certainly hitting a sore spot, Pat! Glad someone's pissed off.
On another note, Keith posted a diary on DKos giving us a sneak peek at this, and I recommended he add another test. Unfortunately I doubt he got down far enough to read it with 700+ comments in the morass. However I'll repost again what I think the CIC test consists of. In this regard, I am in agreement with that silly Ol' Constitution. To wit:
I wish someone would reprint that in the MSM to sink all this silly shit. The Commander-In-Cheif is who the people say he/she is. Period.
Bush senior and Reagan had sex?
Ahmygawd.
Funny as hell though.
As for nr 1, it was a humorous segment, where he kicked to both sides, not fabricating lies or distorting facts about one side.
I certainly had drunk enough in the Air Force and college.
Pat J @ 1:
Embarassment? You are embarassed? Wow, no humor in your life I see.
No one will read this, but I just saw on Today (hate that show) that there is a plan to empower the FED to regulate financial institutions (extended to personal financial issues I believe). In otherwords - a FOURTH branch of government - unelected.
After having looted the treasury, they are now officially privatizing the institution.
Is any body paying attention?
Please - no more stories about some ex brit drug addict that has a better life than I do but cant come to the US to get rich.
Loot someone else's blog to get a blogger that is on this story. This is literally a non-constitutional structural change to the government.
(unedited)
Pat J @ 1:
As I have said many time the truth has a liberal slant. Tell me Pat J what is it that makes you want to stay in Iraq? Is it you feel that Christianity is a superior religion and we need to defeat Islam? Is it you feel that is where Al Qaeda is and we can best defeat terrorism by drawing the worlds terrorist into Iraq where they can be killed? Is it the oil and the thought of Iraqis nationalizing the oil fields is a danger to the world? Is it 9/11 and a lust for revenge? Tell me please.
HUD Secretary Jackson just resigned. Another one bites the dust!
Libertina @ 8:
There's still HUD under this fuckwit? Who'd have known...
RayC @ 7:
average American Joe, waking on the couch with potato chips all over his chest)
Uhh, huh , Wha ... did you say sumthin? sorry, I fell asleep watching American Idol
Pat J @ 1:
There is no Left "counterpart" to O'Reilly. The very existence of O'Reilly's show is based on the fact that he is a mindless droll with an agenda but no ideology. The Left has an ideology that is real. O'Reilly stands in mucky middle-ground arguing for things he can pigeon-hole into an agenda. I think it's great that we have someone in the media that is proud to be an American but doesn't think it's bad to be liberal. It's even better that he's popular and accepted as a real agent for change and truth. Does he pick on Hillary too much for you? Well there's truth in everything that he says, and he's got a platform to share his views. He's not Katie Couric, he's an editorializer.
I personally like my commander-in-chief threshold much better. It's so much more... traditional.
Trivial, and firmly reliant upon a past I hope to forget. Olbermann's expanding pomposity is arriving at an almost-insufferable level, as this clip emphasizes. Apparently such a test was not possible prior to the existence of Countdown's decision that there was such a thing and that it was needed. It goes on and on, and on, much too long. Must've missed this when it first aired. When was that? Certainly not on MSNBC last Friday when Amy Rohrbach guest-hosted and couldn't pronounce "Byzantium" for all her efforts at trying to, three times, three different ways.
anon @ 6:
Just got around to reading Greg Palast's take on the Spitzer lynching.
Wall Street took him out. (He was stupid enough to help)
Wonder if this is tied to the bailout as well ...
Its worth a look/listen.
RayC @ 7:
Don't hold your breath. Pat J is a hit and run kinda guy, he runs in, drops a troll bomb, and runs away.
Poor Hillary and woe unto her worshipping followers who have a problem with reality.
blue balls @ 16:
Truth...
Shouldn't the question be can the Commander-in-Chief pass the tinkle test?
Besides which, isn't the president cic only during times of war, and only with the military, short of a declaration of emergency for limited duration?
Pat J @ 1:
You can thank his 24-year old girlfriend.
anon @ 6:
What in the f*ck are you talking about? Aren't the FED chairmen chosen by congress? A congress that just had the biggest purge of corrupt old bastards since the 1930s? We need more regulation, more responisibilty resting on more peoples shoulders. We've become a nation of entitlement and non-accountablity, and it's time to start holding people, especially the most rich and powerful people, responsible for bad, selfish, greedy decisions. At least, I think it's time...
Oh and I don't believe that the entire world is run by one shadowy group of unimaginable greed, but that greed has infected every facit of this country...
Xylol @ 13:
It's called satire, and if you'd bothered to listen to the introduction, then you know it's based on the laughable assertion that there is some kind of life experience that qualifies one to be Commander-in-Chief.
If it was being under sniper fire, as Hillary attests, then Bush failed.
If it was making difficult decisions in the face of an impending crisis, Bush has failed multiple times.
Regardless, Keith pokes fun at candidates from both sides.
As for your 'a past I hope to forget,' comment, we'll just mark your paper, 'doomed to repeat' and leave it at that.
anon @ 6:
HELLO - this is the most important issue for the next 95 years (2008-1913) - the "FED" is NOT Federal or a Reserve - WAKE UP CALL - the privately controlled central bank known as the "FED" created the financial mess we are in with the help of the President and Congress. Who benefits? Not you or I. And now they want to give them more power and control.
OK - back to the humor from Keith because we certainly need it.
ysbaddaden @ 18:
The president is the commander-in-chief solely for the purpose of establishing a chain of command, so that he may issue legitimate orders. Period. Only a thrice-failed asshat like Bush would think his role is actually that of a military leader.
The unspoken implication is that the commander-in-chief, holding said authority, is accountable and responsible for such orders as he might give. Now, the Bush crowd knows this, which is why they're always arguing for the 'unitary president' - power without checks and balances.
Jake @ 20:
The FED is a statutory agency. Statutory - not constitutional.
They control interest rates - money supply, and if this happens by decree from the secretary of the treasury - they will 'manage' the financial institutions of the US.
Regulation is needed, but that happens by elected representatives NOT private banking headed by political cronies.
Since Reagan, homes and cars have increased in price 800%, gas by 1600%, CEO salaries by 1800% and workers wages have increased 33%. After retiring, Greenspan commented while in Europe that one of his jobs as chairman of the FED was maintaining pressure on wages to protect corporate profits. 800%, 1600%, 1800% ----- 33%. Why? Reagan killed government regulation - refused to use Taft Hartley - replaced political economic policy with corporate finance from the chicago school of economics (stigler friedman) - and destroyed the economy.
The Secretary of the treasury is doing this by decree - this is not a constitutional process.
Keith is the only program I watch on MSNBC on a regular basis. I think he is terrific and he does poke fun at all sides.
Lisa @19, Keith has a 24 year-old girlfriend? Is her name Chelsea?
The Illusion of an informed public.
insufferable?? oh come on, it was amusing and funny.
I will only be happier when everyone refers to McCain by his new title... the one he is RUNNING FROM... because he knows how reality hurts...
Going forward, I will only refer to John "The Republican" McCain, as such.
His team has gone to GREAT EXPENSE to keep this label off of him--- but I believe he should wear it proudly... "like a lapel pin"
Lisa Williamson @ 19:
That would swell something other than my ego.
Pat J @ 1:
Oh, yeah - Keith has a girlfriend.
O'Reilly had to write detective smut and make obscene phone calls to his female staffers ...
Pat J @ 1:
boo hoo!
If GWB passed the test, there is no such thing as a failing grade.
neverbeenfooled @ 33:
No Chimp Left Behind ...
Nice work. But it's spelled BIATHLON. Minus one point, Keith.
Keith O may indeed have a girlfriend, but his boyfriend is obama.
XYLOL @13 well done you
Man i hope Obama's people prep him properly for Hardball on wednesday. I have seen him in open forums and he is very fact light. I think all the campaigns have research teams and though i support him, his grasp of relevant numbers and statistics disheartens me.
Chris Matthews is no Olbermann. If he comes half-cocked it could end his career.
Shadowgm Hussein @ 31:
...And Dennis Kucinich has a really hot wife----- proving that Liberalism is sexy.
Does anyone take Keith serous? Of course they are going to mis speak, can anyone here go through a day without gaffing?
My, what a touchy little group. I never indicated one way or the other which candidate I supported yet the posts are going off the page that I am in favor of this horrible war in Iraq, that I am against Christianity, and that I have no sense of humor. And all I said was that Olbermann was a hot air balloon, pontificating behind a desk that hardly contains his swollen ego, and thinks he is channeling Edward R. Morrow. Now why would that get me nailed to the barn door? Loosen up guys, I too am counting down the days when Dagwood returns to Crawford and a dem sits in the WH again. That still does not change my opinion: KO is a horse's ass.
chris @ 40:
Generally? Yes.
(S)erous...mis speak, and you're questioning our gaffe's?
41 Pat J
I'd druther nail the farmer's daughter against the farmhouse door.
Pat J @ 41:
I suspect you're not at all familiar with Edward R. Murrow, and not just because you can't spell his name.
You might want to check out the film 'Good Night and Good Luck,' although the original broadcast upon which that is based is also available on DVD. Murrow's keynote speech at an RTNDA (Radio & Television News Directors Association) is also of note. Keith is returning not only to the days of Murrow and other pre-eminent broadcast journalists, he is clearly identifying his opinions as commentary.
ysbaddaden @ 43:
Gaffes
But then I always preferred Al Jaffe.
chris @ 40:
I can see from the posts of yours I've read, that it's beyond you. No wonder you think it's OK...
Pat J @ 41:
takes one to know one, or so I've been told.
I imagine you would prefer the milquetoast approach to dealing with the scumbags in The White House - "Thank you, Master, may I please have another?"
I suppose all those people who booed Bush at the baseball game are blowhards too.
by the way,
milque·toast /ˈmɪlkˌtoʊst/
–noun (sometimes initial capital letter) a very timid, unassertive, spineless person, esp. one who is easily dominated or intimidated.
Verdillac @ 48:
I dunno, none of them blown me yet.
Why was Popeye always saying to Olive Oyl, "Well blow me down!" ?
MSNBC is now at the very rock-bottom of cable ratings.
What that means, is that Olberman and Matthews are like the trees falling in the woods with nobody present: NOBODY is listening anymore.
Didn't have to be this way.
Choices have consequences.
chris @ 40:
Yes.
Just because you and your buddies can't does not meant that the rest of the human race can manage to go 24hrs without fucking up things significantly. There are the few people who do manage that, although we tend to call them retards, and at least in the old days we used to discourage having them in positions of power.
But it is funny to see the peeps at bottom of the barrel with their projection... LOL
Tyler Durden @ 52:
But it is funny to see the peeps at bottom of the barrel with their projection... LOL
Here's my projection for the peeps at bottom of the barrel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-emQAsGMeQ
douglas in oklahoma @ 36:
Now that's funny .... and so true lmfao
Shadowgm Hussein @ 45:
Yes you have to be very very careful and not say anything bad about Sen. Obama or the trolls come out of their caves around here.
Can You Pass The “Commander-In-Chief” Test?
Sure, I can flunk a name the foreign leaders test as well as anyone.
I don't care for anyone bombing Iran that's one thing about McCain that really scares me ..but how about this candidate who would bomb Iran. Does he change his mind with whichever seems best to the public at that particular time.
http://www.dissentvoice.org/Oct04/Smith1012.htm
Keith Olbermann is a blowhard.
SK @ 58:
You know this personally, how?
Yeah, Keith has an inflated ego now, he needs to tone it down, still when he's on the mark few reporters are better at pinpointing WTF is wrong with GWB and almost everyone at FOX+ his guests are usually excellent. So I'll listen to him over a hell of a lot of jerks with minimal brain power sitting in front of a camera.
Anyone who compares Keith to a mindless turd like Bill O' SHIT though in any way, shape or form needs their head examined ASAP. Wait, wait sorry you can compare them try subtracting 97.2 points from Keith's IQ and what do you get.....you got it.
ysbaddaden @ 50:
If you get knocked down by a blowing, I would imagine it was well executed. Bill Clinton's almost toppled him!
I did not know before that Keith countdown is aired on NBC on sundays - With no cable,I never catch his MSNBC show, this was exciting. By saying that, I was not sure, whether I enjoyed yesterday's show though. The whole section about commander-in-cheif test was not consistently funny and also hurried up. I am also disappointed that he had only libreal hosts and not even moderates to discuss. That is fine with me , still I have seen complaints about Fox news always having conservatives in their show with out providing alternative point of view. Other than that, it is refreshing to see a TV journalist/Opinion show which portrays news as it is and with out any obvious pushing in to viewers throat.
Mary,Mary @51 --- You are so right; I have watched and loved Keith O for many years. Then he slowly, then not so slowly turned against Sen Clinton; he morphed her into george bush. And several weeks ago, just before the Geraldine Ferraro -she be a racist shit- Keith O stepped over a line, the last line -- and we left, all at once without a plan. Later when I talked, emailed, telephoned, all my friends and family here and around the country, I discovered they too had -- had enough. He did it too himself ; too much animus and vitriol for the Clintons and too many man-crushes for obama. so mary, well done you
robyn williams @ 54:
Wow... so mature. So poignant...
How low have the mighty republicons and hillbots fallen...
That tape of LBJ just reminded me of something...
Democrat or Republican....PLEASE guys, NO MORE TEXAN PRESIDENTS, okay?!
miss_kitty Hussein @ 47:
I almost feel sorry that some people consider it a "gaffe" to not know your right from your left....
Slow.News.Day.
Ah .... the "Make and Spin News for B O Campaign network is a more apt name for that news media.
KO should become BO's chief campaign spokesman. This would FINALLY make IT OFFICIAL since they IT IS CLEAR that they are in HIS TENT.
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