Posts tagged Keith Olbermann
Once the Republicans get rolling, they assume they’re going to win everything. They are zealots, and zealots assume the last five percent of whatever their plan is will be taken care of by their own greatness or momentum or divinity.
Keith Olbermann: Fox News Is A ‘Political Whorehouse’
Keith Olbermann had some charged words for the weekend anchors of Fox News’ morning program, “Fox and Friends.”During his “Worst Persons” segment on Monday, Olbermann lashed out at Clayton Morris, Allyson Camerota, and Dave Briggs for a report on Occupy Wall Street. Olbermann ran a clip that featured the hosts commenting on Stacy Hessler, a 38-year-old mother of four who left her home in Florida with the support of her family to participate in the Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park. The “Fox and Friends” hosts, who Olbermann described as “the B-team to the weekday dingbats” and as “astoundingly bad,” harshly criticized Hessler for associating her decision to temporarily leave her family and participate in Occupy Wall Street with military personnel who have to leave their families to serve. They called it “disgusting” and Camerota said that Hessler “must be having a midlife crisis of some sort to leave [her] kids.” “So she’s disgusting, she’s having a midlife crisis, she is denying her husband sex and is an unfit mother because she decided to get involved in something political that she believes in?” Olbermann wondered. He then directed his comments to host Camerota, saying that she has to leave her three children 4 AM to work at the “political whorehouse that is Fox News.” Olbermann added, still referring to Camerota, “I don’t see anyone suggesting they take her kids away.” Olbermann is a harsh critic of Fox News and has previously tweeted that the network is “100% bullshit.”
Keith Olbermann Reading Occupy Wall St Declaration
This was unanimously voted on by all members of Occupy Wall Street last night, around 8pm, Sept 29. It is our first official document for release. We have three more underway, that will likely be released in the upcoming days: 1) A declaration of demands. 2) Principles of Solidarity 3) Documentation on how to form your own Direct Democracy Occupation Group.
This is a living document. you can receive an official press copy of the latest version by emailing c2anycga@gmail.com.
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
Occupy Wall St. vs Fox News with Jesse LaGreca.
“Fox News wants to laugh at us,” Mr. LaGreca told us in a phone interview Tuesday evening. “To say that we’re unruly, that we’re to be laughed at….because that fits into their narrative, which is that only free markets can save us. Only unregulated capitalism can save us. And anyone in opposition to that needs to be attacked and marginalized.’” Mr. LaGreca certainly does not fit into the media’s stereotype of the obtusely disenfranchised ne0-hippies that have been camping out at Zuccotti Park. He’s been a freelance writer for the Daily Kos under the name MinistryOfTruth for the last three years and is one of their most frequent writers and commenters. He’s a member of various subgroups on the site, including their Anonymous forum, Environmental Foodies, and the Progressive Policy Zone. Mr. LaGreca is no East Coast liberal either: though he currently resides in New York, it’s only been for a month. His previous homes were in Colorado and Illinois. He does not (as far as we know) have health insurance. He is subsidized for his writing mostly by a Paypal link he set up on his articles. He is articulate, with framed arguments that have obviously been rehearsed in advanced. Not only is he the face of “The Budding Stars of Occupy Wall Street,” according tothe Atlantic Wire, but his presence is large enough to inspire its own legion of fans. (We noticed that he had a larger Twitter following than our personal account.) Basically: Mr. LaGreca is Fox News’ worst nightmare. “Their first question was whether we were inspired by Greece,” said Mr. LaGreca, referencing the the way the network would lead protesters to inflammatory answers, “Which had a couple of incidents of student violence…It’s a running meme in the right wing media: that if we don’tdo something about our economy we’re going to end up like Greece. But the only thing we can do is what Fox News has been showing us since the day Obama was inaugurated.” Mr. LaGreca is not, like the media has portrayed some of the protesters, a brainwashed Obama-ite. His Daily Kos article from August is a scathing critique of Obama’s nomination of Sen. Mike Lee’s general counsel for U.S. Attorney of Utah. When asked if he would be willing to go on Fox News and finally get to tell his side of the story, Mr. LaGreca surprisingly demurred. “I don’t want to go on with anyone who has a history of misconstruing people’s statements. There’s certain networks that I have an obvious bias against. But there are people like Keith Olbermann, Dylan Ratigan…Jim Axelrod, who was a total gentleman. I’m willing to give anyone a fair shake. I’m willing to talk.” Despite being a very vocal member down at Zuccotti Park, Mr. LaGreca denies speaking for the Occupy Wall Street movement. “I’m not a spokesperson for anyone but myself,” he tells us. Okay, but does he have any advice for those watching the watchmen; i.e. protesters on the lookout for cherry-picking media reporters? “One: be camera ready. Have your camera on you so if there is a media slant, you can capture it. Two: have a coherent message. Tell people exactly why you are here…not what other people are doing. The overarching theme here is that people are being screwed, but that can’t be summed up in a soundbite-ready statement. However if you tell the media your personal story, it’s the most touching, the most effective way to communicating to people why they should be here as well.”
Marine Corps veteran Sgt. Shamar Thomas on Occupy Times Square, veterans’ rights
Keith Olbermann and Shamar Thomas – a Marine Corps veteran who attended the Occupy Times Square protest on Oct. 15 and confronted police officers for using excessive force on protesters – discuss what the Occupy movement means to him and the potential for other veterans to get involved. Thomas, for whom military service is a family affair, pointed out that riot police were not necessary in Times Square. “I’ve been in battle. There was no battle going on.” Thomas wants to inspire other veterans to support the movement: “This is our time – in our generation – to change the greed that is in America.”
“First of all, about 300 people signed petitions,” Arpaio said of the investigation into Obama’s birth certificate. “I am the chief law enforcement officer, they asked me to look at that situation. I don’t dump everything in the wastebasket. So I have my ‘Cold Case Posse’ which I’ve had for five years. It’s free; it doesn’t cost a penny to the taxpayers. Made up of ex-cops and some lawyers, so let them look at it.”
President Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1961, but so-called “birthers” have long argued that Obama is not in fact a U.S. citizen and have challenged the president to produce his long-form birth certificate as evidence. After ignoring the controversy for months, the White House releasedthe president’s long-form birth certificate in April, but even that has not silenced his critics.
The next question to Arpaio was why he does not punish employers for hiring undocumented immigrants but sends undocumented immigrants to jail. He replied that the law against employers is a civil law, not a criminal one, and therefore falls outside his purview, and that he “locked up” those with “false identification.”
Arpaio is infamous for his publicity stunts as sheriff, including making inmates wear pink underwear, conducting immigration sweeps in Latino neighborhoods, and moving inmates between jails in chains. The majority of inmates picked up in his sweeps are undocumented immigrants.
The next question came in from a Facebook user: “Why are you a racist against Latinos?”
Arpaio chuckled. “Well I’m not going to get into my personal life, and grandkids, and daughter-in-laws. I don’t have to defend myself against that vicious attack. So, he can have his opinion — I know what I am.” , which, of course, as the entire country knows, Sheriff Jackass Joe has demonstrated himself (time and time again) to be an idiotic, narcissistic, racist, corrupt, embarrassing AssClown.
