From the article: "Rachel Maddow’s ‘Debunction Junction’ corrects a correction: Rachel was accused of spreading false information by watchdog site Politifact recently when she claimed Wisconsin is just fine and on the road to a surplus, and the site attacked her for omitting information about the state’s budget shortfalls. She knocks down the claim with video evidence, defends Shepard Smith, and addresses personal attacks on her for being gay."
Egypt’s ambassador to the United States tried to clear up the confusion over what President Hosni Mubarak meant in his speech when he said he was handing over authority to Vice President Omar Suleiman.
Amb. Sameh Shoukry told host Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that Suleiman assumes all powers of presidency, making him the de facto Head of State under article 82 of the Egypt’s constitution.
“Mubarak has no power is an interpretation you can make. He is de jour head of state,” Shoukry said. He told Blitzer that his statement regarding the new power structure in Egypt came directly from Vice President Suleiman.
Suleiman will now be undertaking all decisions and responsibility of the office, including the military, Shourky said. Neither Mubarak or Suleiman will have the power to dissolve the parliament.
Update at 7:08 p.m. ET: Al Arabiya TV reports the Egyptian army may issue a second statement tonight, the BBC says (in an aritlce titled “Mubarak Refuses to Quit.”)
Update at 6:06 p.m. ET: Egypt’s U.S. ambassador tells CNN that President Hosni Mubarak “has transferred the powers of the presidency to his vice president, who will now undertake all authority as president.” That means Vice President Omar Suleiman is the de-facto head of state and the military. (The aritlce at CNN is titled “Egypt unrest: Mubarak’s speech leaves nation, world wondering who’s in charge.”)
Update at 5:50 p.m. ET: Key opposition figure Mohammad ElBaradei tweets, “Egypt will explode. Army must save the country now.”
CAIRO — Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak is to step down tonight, two sources have told NBC News, losing his 30-year grip on power after 17 days of mass uprisings across the country.
NBC’s Richard Engel reported that a high-ranking source inside the president’s office said the newly appointed vice president, Omar Suleiman, would take over. This was confirmed by a second source.
State television reported that country’s supreme military council had expressed its “support of the legitimate demands” of the protesters after an all-day meeting. The latest developments came on the heels of repeated warnings by members of the regime of a military crackdown or coup.
Some pro-democracy protesters reacted cautiously to the reports Mubarak was leaving, saying they would only believe them if and when he announced his departure on television.
President Barack Obama on Thursday said the United States would do all it can to support an orderly transition to democracy in Egypt.
“We are witnessing history unfold,” Obama said, adding “It’s a moment of transformation that’s taking place because the people of Egypt are calling for change.”
Egypt’s vice president and former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman is expected to assume power in Egypt should current president Hosni Mubarak resign, CIA Director Leon Panetta said today.
“I received reports that possibly Mubarak might do that [step down],” Panetta told the House Intelligence Committee today. “I don’t know the particulars of how [the transition] would work, but I would assume he would turn over more of his powers to Suleiman to direct the country and the reforms.”
Egyptian state television reported Mubarak has met with Suleiman about the future of the nation. Just hours before, Egypt’s chief of staff of the army announced to a cheering crowd in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, “All your demands will be met tonight.” Chief among the protestor’s demands was that Mubarak step down. Mubarak will address the nation tonight, Egypt’s state television reported.
But with the eyes of the world turned to Egypt during such a historic moment, two questions have emerged: Who is Omar Suleiman and what does his possible ascension mean for Egypt’s future?
For the U.S., the CIA, Israel, and Egypt’s Islamist opposition, 74-year-old Suleiman, who has been the head of Egyptian intelligence since 1993, represents a continuation of the policies of the old regime, intelligence experts told ABC News.
“Mubarak and Suleiman are the same person,” Emile Nakhleh, a former top Middle East analyst for the CIA, said shortly after Suleiman was named vice president just days into Egypt’s anti-government protests. “They are not two different people in terms of ideology and reform.”
President Obama sent a supportive signal Thursday to the Egyptians on the brink of ousting their despotic leader: America is with you.
“We are witnessing history unfold,” Obama said on a trip to Michigan. “It’s a moment of transformation that is taking place because the people of Egypt are calling for change.”
Obama did not outright call for the resignation of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled his country with an iron hand for 30 years.
Instead, Obama said, “We want all Egyptians to know that America will continue to do everything we can to support an orderly transition to Democracy in Egypt.”
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EMERGENCY APPEAL:From Paul Evans: It’s a miraclethat I am still able to bring you Evans Liberal Politics. I am in severe poverty and although the Salvation Army was good enough to grant me 100 gallons of fuel oil (God Bless you guys), this won’t last even a month. Please help us! CenturyLink, my phone company and DSL provider, was kind enough to give me a short extension on bill payment, but in fact, I don’t have the money to pay the electric bill. Folks, this won’t go on forever. We need your donations, ASAP. Please send checks OR money orders to Paul Evans, 5396 Overton Road, Wooster, OH 44691. Help keep free journalism alive and help my family have gas for my car and something to eat. If you can help though a direct donation, call me at 330-262-0571. Thank you and Bless you all.
Keith Olbermann out at MSNBC, The Raw Story, January 21, 2011, by Nathan Diebenow, used with permission, quoted verbatim: Evans Liberal Politics is happy to partner with The Raw Story to bring you cutting edge news.
Final update 11:09 p.m. EST
The liberal host of MSNBC’s “Countdown” has completed his last broadcast for the cable news network he called home for the past eight years.
Keith Olbermann: "Good Night and Good Luck"
“Good night, and good luck,” Keith Olbermann said as he threw his script behind him for the last time at the end of his show.
The phrase is one he borrowed from the late veteran radio and television journalist Edward R. Murrow.
MSNBC released a short statement, saying that the two parties had not apparently reached agreement on Olbermann’s contact.
“MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract,” the statement said.
It continued, “The last broadcast of ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann’ will be this evening. MSNBC thanks Keith for his integral role in MSNBC’s success and we wish him well in his future endeavors.”
No further explanation was given.
Olbermann thanked a number of people in his sign-off, but failed to mention any MSNBC executives.
An MSNBC spokesperson told The Washington PostFriday night that the NBC Universal-Comcast merger this week played no role in Olbermann’s departure. MSNBC’s president would not comment.
A second statement from MSNBC concerning line-up changes gave no mention of Olbermann either.
Following Olbermann Friday night, Maddow did not cover her co-worker’s departure.
Oddly enough, halfway through her show, MSNBC featured an ad promoting Olbermann’s show, according to The Guardian.
Maddow, appearing as a guest on RealTime with Bill Maher (see embedded video below) live after her show, addressed Olbermann’s departure. Details, though, were sparse.
“Yeah, it’s been a big day at MSNBC. At least it’s been in 15 minutes,” she said.
Maher did not buy Maddow’s explanation that Olbermann and the new company had cuts ties by “mutual decision.”
“That’s always bullsh*t,” Maher said.
“I know very little,” Maddow replied, immediately describing Olbermann’s exit as “very gracious and nice.”
In an early report, CNN’s Anderson Cooper said on his Twitter feed that Olbermann was fired. Raw Story initially reported that Olbermann had quit. However, MSNBC used neither phrase.
Olbermann and management have had a rocky relationship over the years; recently, the host was suspended for two days last November for contributing to Democratic election campaigns against company policy.
In 2008, Olbermann and MSNBC agreed to a four-year contract extension worth $30 million. This past week, the FCC and the Justice Department approved the merger of Comcast and NBC-Universal.
Sam Stein, Huffington Post’s political reporter, said via Twitter that Comcast’s merger had less to do with Olbermann’s exit than with Jeff Zucker leaving his post as president and CEO of NBC Universal.
“Zucker was Olbermann’s protector there,” Stein said.
Mediaite also cast the Olbermann/MSNBC split in terms of office politics.
“Countdown,” the network’s top-rated program, attracted 1.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen. However, Olbermann failed to match the ratings of FoxNews’ most popular anchor Bill O’Reilly.
Media mogul Russell Simmons reacted on his blog to Olbermann’s November suspension by stating that the network would end up suffering.
“Without Olbermann, MSNBC can’t survive – and the voice of progress will fall to the dark ages, when one unholy church dictated a fictional version of the truth,” he said.
Simmons concluded, “Re-instate Keith Olbermann now. I will personally pay his campaign contributions.”
Word is that CNN would not hire Olbermann because of the network’s strict non-partisan editorial perspective.
Olbermann has yet to reveal his plans.
####
Here is the transcript of Olbermann’s Final Thought from his final show (see video, above):
I think the same fantasy popped into the head of everybody in my business who has ever been told what I have been told — “this will be the last edition of your show.” You go to the scene from the movie Network, complete with the pajamas and the raincoat, and go off on a verbal journey of unutterable vision, and you insist upon Peter Finch’s guttural resonance, and you will the viewer to go to the window, open it, stick out his head and yell. You know the rest. In the mundane world of television goodbyes, reality is laughably uncooperative. When I resigned from ESPN 13 1/2 years ago, I was given 30 seconds to say goodbye at the end of my last edition of SportsCenter. With God as my witness, in the commercial break before the moment, the producer got into my earpiece and said, ‘Can you cut it down to 15 seconds so we can get in the tennis result?’ I’m grateful that I have more time to sign off here.
Regardless, this is the last edition of Countdown. It is just under 8 years since I returned to MSNBC. I was supposed to fill in for exactly three days. 49 days later, there was a year’s contract for me to return to this 8:00 time slot that I fled years earlier. The show established its position as anti-establishment with the stage craft of mission accomplished to the exaggerated rescue of Jessica Lynch in Iraq to the death of Pat Tillman to Hurricane Katrina to the nexus of politics and terror to the first Special Comment. The program grew entirely due to your support and great commentary. I hope for you too. There were many occasions where all that surrounded the show, and never the show itself, was too much for me. With your support and loyalty — if I may use the word insistence — required that I keep going. My gratitude to you is boundless and you think I have done good here, imagine how it looked as you donated $2 million to the National Association of Free Clinics and my dying father watched from his hospital bed and comforted that his struggles were inspiring such good for people, he and I and you would never meet, but would always know. This may be the only television program where in the host the much more in awe of the audience than vice-versa. We will also be in my heart for that and the donations to the family in Tennessee and these victims of governmental heartlessness in Arizona to say nothing of every letter and tweet and wave and handshake and online petition. Time ebbs here and top the close with more story. It is still Friday. Let me thank my gifted staff and a few of the many people who fought with me and for me: Eric Sorenson, Neal Shapiro, Michael Weiss, David Bloom, John Palmer, Alana Russo. Rachel Maddow and Bob Costas and my greatest protector, the late Tim Russert.
QUEEN Another One Bites the Dust
From Paul Evans: It’s a miraclethat I am still able to bring you Evans Liberal Politics. I am in severe poverty and CenturyLink, my phone company and DSL provider, was kind enough to give me a short extension on bill payment. Folks, this won’t go on forever. We need your donations, ASAP. Please send checks OR money orders to Paul Evans, 5396 Overton Road, Wooster, OH 44691. Help keep free journalism alive and help my family have gas for my car and something to eat. Thank you and Bless you all.
Republicans are going to be embarrassed at the way they’ve opposed a mosque — known as Cordoba House or Park51 — that’s planned near Ground Zero, according to one conservative host.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough told Republicans Monday that they should “speak out against Newt Gingrich and the voices of hate.” While he was at it, Scarborough threatened to leave the GOP for a party “that actually believes in small government.”
Last week, Gingrich compared supporters of the mosque to Nazis. Appearing on Fox & Friends, Gingrich said, “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington.”
Prior to that, Gingrich argued that the mosque shouldn’t be built near Ground Zero until churches and synagogues are allowed in Saudi Arabia.
“This is demagoguery of the first order,” Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, said Monday. “And people in the Republican Party need to separate themselves from these voices.”
“And I talk to you, my Republican brethren,” he said into the camera. “I don’t know how much longer you’ll be my brethren. I’ll be honest. I’m looking for a conservative party that actually believes in small government and not engaging in Wilsonian wars but that’s another discussion.”
“I’m just talking, you know, as a friend,” Scarborough continued. “I promise you this. You’re going to be embarrassed. You’re going to look back two, three, four years from now and this is going to be dark blot on your record if you don’t speak out against New Gingrich and the voices of hate.”
“This is an embarrassment and you need to speak out against it,” he said.
Opponents of the mosque protested in lower Manhattan Sunday. Daisy Khan, the wife of the controversial imam backing the Islamic center, said Sunday that opposition was “like a metastasized anti-Semitism.”
MSNBC’s Willie Geist told Scarborough that the opposition is proof that anti-Muslim sentiment is worse now than after Sept. 11, 2001.
“It shows us that we are probably farther backward that we were maybe even nine years ago in our interfaith relations,” said Geist.
Scarborough Argues Against Gingrich, GOP Bigoted Demagoguery on MSNBC:
"Deplorable, It Is Sick Politics:" Joe Scarborough, appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, discusses Newt Gringrich’s ‘Nazi’ comments about the ground zero mosque. — 4:51
Newt Gingrich is the new Joe McCarthy in American Politics:
For those of you who don’t remember, from the Wikipedia article on “demagoguery”: “Joseph McCarthy (was a) U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 to 1957. A poor orator, he rose to national prominence during the early 1950’s by accusing a number of politicians and other individuals of being either communists or communist sympathizers. He presented himself as being above reproach while anyone who questioned or disagreed with him he branded as disloyal to the US government. Ultimately his inability to substantiate his claims led him to be censured by the United States Senate in 1954 and to fall from popularity.”
Comment by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans:Newt, I never thought very highly of you, but how low you’ve sunk! According to my friend Linda, the concensus on MSNBC’s Morning Joe is that Newt is mainly out to turn a buck selling his books and this is publicity. There was discussion that (of course) he has been prominently mentioned as a Republican Presidential candidate, but if were doing that, he’s alienating too many Reagan Democrats, Independents and fiscal Republicans with this grandstand act on the ground zero mosque. And he just finished a similar grandstand act on "family values" and homosexuality back at the beginning of August. No, Mr. Gingrich apparently is just shamelessly trying to make a buck. And think of the forces he has loosed in America, he and his cohort in bigotry Sarah Palin! Freakin’ idiots!~ Paul Evans
Lower Manhattan mosque part of ‘Americanization’ of Islam, Daisy Khan says
The wife of the imam behind the Cordoba House Muslim community center in Manhattan says the opposition to its construction goes “beyond Islamophobia,” likening it to a “metastasized anti-Semitism.”
“We are deeply concerned, because this is like a metastasized anti-Semitism,” Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour. “It’s not even Islamophobia. It’s beyond Islamophobia, it’s hate of Muslims.”
The interview took place as supporters and opponents of the mosque protested in lower Manhattan on Sunday, with police keeping the two groups blocks apart.
Khan was joined on ABC’s This Week by Rabbi Joy Levitt, head of the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. Levitt said that “some part” of the opposition to the mosque “feels very familiar.”
Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia won his seat in Congress campaigning as a strict defender of the Constitution. He carries a copy in his pocket and is particularly fond of invoking the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
But it turns out there are parts of the document he doesn’t care for — lots of them. He wants to get rid of the language about birthright citizenship, federal income taxes and direct election of senators, among others. He would add plenty of stuff, including explicitly authorizing castration as punishment for child rapists.
This hot-and-cold take on the Constitution is surprisingly common within the GOP, particularly among those like Broun who portray themselves as strict Constitutionalists and who frequently accuse Democrats of twisting the document to serve political aims.
Republicans have proposed at least 42 Constitutional amendments in the current Congress, including one that has gained favor recently to eliminate the automatic grant of citizenship to anyone born in the United States.
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