On Monday, Keith Olbermann delivered a post-script to his Special Comment from last week in which he told President Bush to "shut the hell up." Since some lunatic fringe commentators were deliberately twisting Keith's words and implying that he called American soldiers -- and not Bush administration officials, to whom he was clearly referring -- "cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives," he felt compelled to clarify his remarks.

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It seems to me that these right-wingers have inadvertently shown their true colors, their instinctive hatred of and contempt for, these self-sacrificing Americans, who have been needlessly placed in harm's way by these very commentators and the politicians they support.

They hear criticism of our nation's collective conduct in Iraq, and immediately assume it's the fault of the soldiers.

In the wake of an insult that exists only in their minds and never in my words nor in my heart, there remains, I think, only one question to ask: Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin: Why do you hate our troops?

Full transcripts below the fold:

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In an astoundingly ignorant interview with The Politico's Mike Allen Tuesday, President Bush insinuated that electing a Democrat in November would lead to another attack on America, and revealed that he made the ultimate sacrifice by giving up golf shortly after the start of the Iraq War -- the timing of which he lied about. Naturally, Keith ripped into him tonight -- with all the anger and passion you've come to expect from a Special Comment -- for continuing this despicable fear-mongering, and for failing to understand what true sacrifice is.

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Do your part in telling President Bush to "shut the hell up": Digg It!

"Mr. President," he was asked, "you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?
"Yes," began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans -- on our history.
"It really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."
Golf, Sir?
Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq?
Do you think these families, Mr. Bush - their lives blighted forever -- care about you playing golf?
Do you think, Sir, they care about you?
You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed.
Sir, to show your solidarity with them - you gave up golf?
Sir, to show your solidarity with them - you didn't give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war.
Sir, to show your solidarity with them - you didn't even give up talking about Iraq - a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world?
Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn't give up... your
4,000 dead Americans and your response... was to stop playing golf!
Golf.
Not "gulf" - golf.

Full transcripts below the fold:

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It now appears that the case between Wal-Mart and Jim and Debbie Shank will finally be settled, but Keith Olbermann still gives them the bronze award for good measure on his Worst Person in the World segment on Monday's Countdown. As of today, the Shanks should finally have control over Debbie's estate so that her husband can pay for her 24/7 care.

The silver goes to Doug Goodyear, John McCain's pick to run the RNC National Convention -- until it was revealed that Goodyear's lobbying firm netted several hundred thousand dollars for lobbying on behalf of the military dictatorship of Myanmar, which has been blocking cyclone relief aid from it's own citizens.

The gold went to...BillO. Mr. Orally went overboard about a Seattle newspaper for refusing to post photos of two men who were seen "acting suspiciously" on a local ferry, even sending his flying monkey-boy producer to the home of the paper's publisher to pressure him into publishing the photos. As it turns out, the two men turned up at a U.S. embassy a couple of weeks ago and identified themselves as European business consultants who were sight seeing while they had some time off for work. They even turned over copies of the pictures they took that day.

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Bill Moyers, host of PBS' Bill Moyers Journal, is one of the few remaining REAL journalists left in American media. We've covered many of his PBS segments and it was a great pleasure to cover his appearance with Keith Olbermann on Monday's Countdown.

Moyers and Olbermann touch on the corporate media, their biases and the way they are shaping, and in many cases, damaging our country and its politics by ignoring critical issues and grinding information into sound bytes and bumper sticker-type messages:

Olbermann: "...Clearly the tendency is towards truncating everything, condensing everything into that eventual black hole of information where nothing escapes. How does it apply as you look ahead towards this general election campaign? How does it apply to each of the candidates, in turn?"

Moyers: "I think it means for all of them that they won't really get to the deep, profound structural problems that we face as a country. We're not going to have a discourse in this campaign over the fact that the great American wealth machine is benefiting only those at the top. We're not going to get to the fact that 10% of the people own 60% of the wealth and 70% of the people have no net worth. We're not going to get to the issues of how do we rebuild the infrastructure, the sewer, the water, the highways, all that. We're just going to be constantly in this battle of bumper stickers."

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So many creeps, so little time. The bronze goes to the owners of the Phillips 66 station in Marion, Kansas, who fired their employee who was robbed at gunpoint, because at the time of the robbery there was more than $150 in the till. The problem was that the employee was in the process of transferring $100 to the safe at the time the robber entered the building to rob it. Those guys are really strict, aren't they? I bet they charged their employees for the little plastic creamer tubs for their coffee too.

The silver goes to perennial nominee Bill O'Reilly, whose ego is incapable of understanding that this little feud that he has going with Keith Olbermann is only increasing Olbermann's ratings share. Billo knows better than to point to Olbermann by name, so his has been a campaign of slurs against the parent company of MSNBC, GE. On this program, he tried to tie GE to sales to Iran via a German company that sold software developed by a GE subsidiary. Of course, Bill has neither the integrity or the intellectual honesty to admit that the German company, Draeger, admitted wrongdoing and had nothing at all to do with GE.

And finally, the gold goes to Roger "Jabba the Hut" Ailes, president of FoxNews for the singularly most perplexing entertainment news since Lynn Spears announced she was writing a book on motherhood. Ailes fired production assistant Jennifer Locke for publicly saying "I voted for you in the primary, you're going to win."

Wait, Rog, you guys fired a P.A. for publicly endorsing the Republican presidential nominee while in front of your own Fox cameras? I’m missing something. Does this mean you’re now going to fire everyone there?

And not to get all tin-foil hattish on you, but McCain's response: "You're not supposed to reveal that," struck me as oddly phrased, in light of what Locke said. I would have expected "Thank you for your support" or "Well, we're trying..." but "You're not supposed to reveal that"? Reveal what? Her support or her knowledge that he is going to win?

And to bring this back to the less banal, Will Bunch reveals the REAL worst person in the world.

While others in the media have played snippets of Rev. Wright's sermons over and over to call into question Barack Obama for his association with his pastor, they've remained conspicuously silent on the statements of conservative Christian leaders John Hagee, Jerry Falwell and Rod Parsley. As I've blogged many times before, the snippets of Wright's words have been taken out of context to twist and make malevolent his intent. But Keith Olbermann allows the full statements of Hagee, Falwell and Parsley to air, revealing their hatred, ignorance and intolerance.

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John Hagee: I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are, were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story, in our local area, that was not carried nationally, that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the…Katrina came, and the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing.

I'm not sure how I feel about exhorting believers to follow a God so willing to callously end the lives of more than 4,000 Gulf Coast residents, most of whom, I think it's safe to say, were not planning on attending the Gay Pride parade in New Orleans.

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Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy's son Peter took the bronze on Monday's Worst Person in the World segment on Countdown for his pathetic hit job on Senator Barack Obama during a live shot from his school.

William "The Bloody" Kristol won the silver for accusing Senators Obama and Clinton for not condemning MoveOn's General Betrayus ad, when in fact, they both signed on to the Senate amendment condemning the ad.

Bigoted pill popper, Rush Limbaugh, took top honors for his insulting and racist remarks made on FOXNews, in which he accused Bill Clinton of hitting on his date, and referred to Los Angels Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa as the Shoeshine Boy, or a Secret Service Agent. Said Olbermann of Doocy Jr:

"Wow, I wonder which emotion impacts dad more at this moment? Pride that at twenty years old, the boy is already a completely replaceable cog in the vast Rupert Murdoch media manipulation machine, or buyer's remorse when he gets the bill for college and realizes the kid's mind has already been nailed shut."

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Another forehead-to-keyboard moment, courtesy of the Bush administration...

First up is the news of Bush's War Supplemental. Bush has submitted a supplemental to the federal budget to cover operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to the tune of $70 billion. That's a seven with ten zeros behind it. As Keith pointed out, $45 billion is to cover combat operations, despite the fact that major combat operations were declared completed five years ago this week. Speaking of major combat operations, non-American press is reporting that US attacks on a Sadr City hospital yesterday has resulted in 20 Iraqis patients and workers wounded, and 49 civilian and ambulance vehicles destroyed. Bombing a hospital for peace, justice and the American Way? Yup, that's gonna win some serious hearts and minds.

Next is an update on the Orwellian No Child Left Behind program, which has resulted in graduation ratios going down and schools hurting for funding country-wide. Turns out that the cornerstone of the program, Reading First, a program emphasizing literacy administered by the president's brother, Neil Bush, has not proven to be effective whatsoever. So the reality is that NCLB is actually leaving children behind in favor of lining the pocket of the Bush family.

And finally, a corollary to the post I made this week on the slaughter of bison in national parks. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne has announced his intent to throw out laws in place since the Reagan administration (going against St. Ronnie? Quel horreur!) and allow the carrying of loaded firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges, a move that park rangers have called unnecessary and potentially dangerous. Gee, ya think?

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Above audio clip and more from Media Matters:

While discussing the controversy surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor, on the April 30 edition of his nationally syndicated Fox News radio show, host John Gibson aired an audio clip of MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow in which she asked, "What else has to happen in the news to push Jeremiah Wright out of the headlines?" Following her comments, Gibson aired an unidentified audio clip of a man saying, " Ooh, lesbians. Yummy." Later in the segment, Gibson's producer, known on-air as "Angry Rich" said, "That Maddow's become bathtub boy's pit bull, hasn't she?" -- an apparent reference to MSNBC's Countdown host, Keith Olbermann. Gibson replied, "Ooohhh. ... Well, I don't know, you know? She may have one of those -- I shouldn't say anything more, should I?" "Angry Rich" said, "No," and Gibson said, apparently referring to his associate producer, "Christine's shaking her head back and forth," and went on to air an audio clip in which an unidentified woman said, "I would like to thank my wife." Gibson later said, "Did I tell you about the people ... on the island of Lesbos?" Read on...

Poor Gibby. His tee vee show got yanked from the polluted FOXNews network and is stuck in the vast wasteland of right wing talk radio. Poor bigot.

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Senator James Inhofe took the Bronze in Thursday's Worst Person in the World segment on Countdown, for cutting and running on Senator Jim Webb's GI Bill after initially having the guts to co-sponsor it.

The Silver went to Senator John McCain for dumping a Dearborn Michigan man from his Michigan campaign after a right wing blogger informed his campaign that the man was a Hezbollah supporter, and the Gold went to ...BillO.

Mr. Orally wins the honor this time for sounding like an angry gym teacher during his interview with Senator Hillary Clinton which aired last night. BillO slammed his usual targets, Kos, George Soros, yadda yadda yadda, and then proclaimed the interview was a World Exclusive! -- except for Keith's World Exclusive! interview with the Senator some ten days earlier and others that preceded it.