MSNBC newsreaders have announced that Hillary Clinton will be “going one on one” with Keith Olbermann on “Countdown” tonight. It should be very interesting because Olbermann is an outspoken admirer of the Clintons but has been unsparing in his criticism of the way the presidential campaign has been run this year.
Here on the Left Coast, “Countdown” is broadcast live at 5 p.m. and re-runs at 7 p.m.
This must-see video, which was posted at The BRAD BLOG, is a bit long but worth it. If you’re not familiar with Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, you may not know that he sends a producer out a camera crew to ambush people in the news by asking them questions phrased to play into Fox’s rightwing propaganda — sort of like “When did you stop beating your wife?”
In this clip Michael Pfeger, a Catholic priest, is unrelenting in refusing to let the Fox dweeb pin him down — and if you watch it through to the end, he actually appears to silence O’Reilly’s goon.
Brad says O’Reilly was only able to use five seconds of this very long interview. In the unfair, unbalanced world of Fox News, that’s a win for the good guys.
Late on Friday, April 11, George Bush confirmed to ABC News that he had approved torture guidelines for use by CIA interrogators that had been developed by senior administration officials.
This came 24 hours after Jonathan Turley, a constitutional expert who argued the pro-impeachment side on cable shows during the Clinton era, described the drafting of the guidelines as a war crime on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.”
Meetings among top Bush officials to design the torture regimen began in 2002. Attendees included Bush, Dick Cheney, Sec. of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft, CIA Director George Tenet, and their aides.
Naturally, this has received scant treatment on cable news and has yet to be covered in the New York Times or Los Angeles Times. It has not been discussed on the Sunday political shows and was not mentioned in the Democratic debate, which was hosted by ABC News, the same news organization that got Bush to admit on the record that he approved the alleged war crimes.
As it happens, this is not George Bush’s first torture scandal:
Cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who has skewered politicians for decades in his comic strip “Doonesbury,’ tells Rolling Stone magazine he remembers Yale classmate George W. Bush as “just another sarcastic preppy who gave people nicknames and arranged for keg deliveries.”
“Even then he had clearly awesome social skills … He could also make you feel extremely uncomfortable … He was extremely skilled at controlling people and outcomes in that way. Little bits of perfectly placed humiliation.”
— Garry TrudeauTrudeau attended Yale University with Bush in the late 1960s and served with him on a dormitory social committee.
“Even then he had clearly awesome social skills,” Trudeau said. “He could also make you feel extremely uncomfortable … He was extremely skilled at controlling people and outcomes in that way. Little bits of perfectly placed humiliation.”
Trudeau said he penned his very first cartoon to illustrate an article in the Yale Daily News on Bush and allegations that his fraternity, DKE, had hazed incoming pledges by branding them with an iron.
The article in the campus paper prompted The New York Times to interview Bush, who was a senior that year. Trudeau recalled that Bush told the Times “it was just a coat hanger, and … it didn’t hurt any more than a cigarette burn”
“It does put one in mind of what his views on torture might be today,” Trudeau said.
In 1999, the tabloid Star magazine reported on Bush’s college torture scandal:
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
