What motivated man accused of sending threats [Olbermann launches on right-wing blogs re: Castagana]

MSNBC ^ | Nov 14, 2006 | By Keith Olbermann

[rightinthemiddle]

"I'm shocked to see MSNBC called Free Republic "some of the most thoughtful right-wing thinkers out there", instead of far right wingnuts."

_________

I saw it (don't ask me why I was watching). Cook was being sarcastic. He's a moonbat.

[rightinthemiddle]

Here's what Cook posted on his website. FR mentioned:

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2006/11/the-castagana-correspondence-right-what-you-know.php

[Matchett-PI]

"Hmm no terror attacks since 9/11 on Bushes watch huh? Oh wait there was the anthrax...then the ricin attack in my home state and now this. Its kind of funny there are no terror attacks in the United States as long as they are not directed to anyone on the left. Good Job guys." ~ sewards1

Hmmmm....you know you're right, newby! Our enemies have been attacking us non-stop right under our very noses during the GWB presidency. Some of them even have *a twinge of conscience about it from time to time, but it doesn't last long. I say we need to impose the "fairness doctrine" on THEM.

Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the press, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse. -Mark Twain

* March 22, 2006

Excerpt of end of radio interview: Hugh Hewitt with guest Christopher Hitchens
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1601335/posts

HH: ...Well then, in 30 seconds, if the Democratic Party returns to power in this country, you get thirty seconds now, what happens?

CH: I'll just tell you something a very senior person at a well-known network. I know this sounds a bit odd, but I just can't tell you who he is or which network. I don't have the right to do it. But you'll have to believe me, okay?

HH: Okay.

CH: He called me the other day. This is not a guy who's in any way a conservative, and said you know, we've known each other for a bit. He said you know, I'm beginning to think you must be right, because it really worries me what we're doing, when we are giving the other side the impression that all they need to do is hang on until the end of this administration. Do people know what they're doing when they're doing this? One doesn't have to make any allegation of disloyalty, but just...if it worries him, as it really does, I think it should worry other people, too, and it certainly worries me.

HH: It certainly should. Christopher Hitchens, as always, a pleasure.


audio here http://www.radioblogger.com/images/03-22hitchens.mp3

*
ABC News Listens to Viewers' Concerns About Iraq Coverage
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1601903/posts

March 23, 2006 ­ Over the last 24 hours, ABC News has been reading hundreds of messages sent in by viewers in response to President Bush's claim that the media are undermining support for war in Iraq.

Viewer opinions ran the gamut, but the vast majority believed the media were biased in their Iraq coverage.

*
Mark Halperin of ABC and his written directions to slant the news in favor of the Democrat candidate- acknowledged by ABC management.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15511

"Our job is not to give people what they want, but what we decide they ought to have."-Richard Salant, former president of CBS News

"We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage, by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose to deal with."- Richard Cohen, Senior Producer, CBS Political News

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle."- Thomas Jefferson

*
The Press at War http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110009203
What ever happened to patriotic reporters? BY JAMES Q. WILSON
Monday, November 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

*
"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague." - Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman Orator --- 106-43 B.C.

[Grampa Dave]

This troll was zotted very quickly.

The ones which concern me are the so called conservatives with on board dates earlier than mine, who hate GW and Republicans more the Clintoons and Saddam.

[Dmitri Willguard]

Mine is a brand-new account here, and I likely won't be reading the forums often, if at all--I'm a liberal.

However, I do want to say that I'm glad I bothered looking to see what you guys had to say about this person.

As much as I disagree with your views, I'm glad to see that he wasn't a welcome member of this community.

[Brad’s Gramma]

Welcome, Dmitri! We're glad you joined.

Stay around, if for nothing else than to read. Our posters put up some GREAT things you won't see elsewhere.

[gonzo]

Glad you got the somebitch, Jim. Good-on-you!

Stay well, pally............FRegards

[E.G.C.]

Here are my thoughts on the subject.

Keith Olbermann is showing himself to be an absolute paranoid goofball. As he sees it, one bad apple is representative of the whole bunch.

What's even more concerning about this whole ordeal is that given his infleunce, he can very easily find some vulnerable state's attorney general and put that person in his pocket. This unforuntately seems to be the problem here in Oklahoma where we made a big mistake in re-electing one such person to another term.

As Keith and his kind see it, it's not Saddam or Al-queida that poses a National Security threat to this country. It's christians and conservatives who pose this threat.

What Mr. Olbermann has essentially done is branded everyone of us as terrorists or potential terrorists who need to be spied on. Apparently he seems to feel that it's his mission tp protect this nation from us.

This kind of B.S. and C.F. is why PMSDNC is contuining to and will continue to lose audience. Because of goofballs and sorry, lazy, miserable, good-for-nothing low life douche bags like Olbermann who are so damn chicken-hearted and scared of people with differing points of view than they have that somehow it's goverment's responsibility to protect them and this nation from these people.

These goofballs have absololutely no idea or concept of where the real terror threats to this country are coming from. G** help us that we make it through the next two years without any problems whatsoever.

Regards......

[airborne]

Only 21 posts until a troll showed up.

You're doing a great job considering that FreeRepublic is open to anyone (even the kooks).

[airborne]

Intelligent debate is healthy and informative.

That's what we do here.

Welcome to FreeRepublic.

[NittanyLion]

Mine is a brand-new account here, and I likely won't be reading the forums often, if at all--I'm a liberal.

Welcome. Stick around and debate a while...we might all learn something.

[beckett]

Police Officer Dave Mobilo
husband and father of a toddler
shot in the back and murdered by Andrew McCrae

Cop Killer Andrew McCrae
student on the far left campus of Evergreen State College
son of a college professor
regular poster on leftwing websites, particularly Indymedia.

[Dmitri Willguard]

I'd like to thank everyone who's given me such a warm welcome. I may visit every so often, though I'm not sure how often I'll actually post replies/comments. I'm happy that you who welcomed me are interested in intelligent debate and discussion of views, though, and that may be enough to entice me to post on those items I feel most passionately about. E.G.C.'s reply to this post contains the first issues that have gotten my attention here on FR, and that I feel the need to clear up. Before I begin my argument, I'd like to make clear that I have no problem with E.G.C. him/herself, or his/her having a different opinion than my own--however, I do think that pointing out the factual errors behind those opinions is something that needs to be done for everybody, and thus I welcome any civilized replies regarding my opinions, should there be any facts I overlooked in constructing this post. [WARNING: LIBERAL RANTING FOLLOWS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.] Keith Olbermann is showing himself to be an absolute paranoid goofball. As he sees it, one bad apple is representative of the whole bunch. -> I understand your position here, in terms of all of you being lumped together as bad apples. However, I have seen such behavior on both sides of the political spectrum, directed to the other side. Liberals and Conservatives are equally guilty of seeing one individual's views as representative of an entire group. I'm willing to admit that I have committed this fallacy many, many times during the time I've been intensely interested in politics... As Keith and his kind see it, it's not Saddam or Al-queida that poses a National Security threat to this country. It's christians and conservatives who pose this threat. -> ...and this line from E.G.C. suggests that he or she is guilty of it as well, assuming my interpretation of "his kind" as meaning "liberals" is accurate--and I apologize if I assume incorrectly. However, regardless of whether or not a logical fallacy was intended there, the views of Mr. Olbermann and his fellow liberals have been seriously misrepresented. Christians and Conservatives as a whole are not seen as a greater threat to our security than Al-Qaeda, and Mr. Olbermann has never expressed such a view. What he, and other liberals, do feel is that some policies advocated by some Conservatives are a danger to the safety of our nation, its citizens, and its soldiers. The most recent, high-profile example of this is the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA06 for the rest of this post), which gives the President the power to declare--through a tribunal whose members are chosen by the President or Secretary of Defense--any person an Unlawful Enemy Combatant (UEC), allowing them to be detained indefinitely and denying them the rights to a fair trial contesting their imprisonment, to have competent legal representation in court, and to have access to all the evidence against them. Now, before you call me paranoid, I must ask: as a vocal Conservative, would you trust a Democratic President, with the power to indefinitely imprison anyone believed to be supporting our enemies, to resist the draw of that power toward silencing his domestic critics? As a wise man said, and people the world over have seen proven in the past, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The MCA06 also has a ban on torture. In another circumstance, this might be enough for me to consider supporting at least part of the legislation. Unfortunately, however, the same piece of legislation grants the power to define what constitutes torture to the President exclusively, thus making it a porous ban at best. This part of the law doesn't make me fear for my own safety, but for that of the troops. What if we were to enter a war with Iran, Syria, or North Korea, and they were to put our uniformed men and women through some of the same ordeals that have been alleged as happening in Guantanamo Bay Prison? We filed charges of war crimes for water-boarding after WWII, for example, and now it is alleged that we are committing the same act (in the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that I have little doubt the allegations are true, though I pray that I am wrong). What Mr. Olbermann has essentially done is branded everyone of us as terrorists or potential terrorists who need to be spied on. -> President George W. Bush was saying almost the same thing about liberals in the run-up to the midterm elections. On several occasions, he has stated--with various levels of explicitness--that a vote for the Democrats is a vote for the terrorists. As for Mr. Olbermann's taking it on himself to protect the nation, you are somewhat accurate. Mr. Olbermann does what few true newsmen (i.e. NOT Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert) have really done during this administration: he calls out the President and Congress on what appear to be abuses of political power. He has taken it upon himself to protect us not from the politicians' conservative base of supporters, but from the politicians themselves. I pray that he will continue to do so with the new Democratic Congress, as well, though neither he nor I deny that he is a left-wing individual and that his reporting likely mirrors that opinion. This kind of B.S. and C.F. is why PMSDNC is contuining to and will continue to lose audience. [Because Olbermann and others on MSNBC are afraid of] people with differing points of view than they have... -> I cut out a large section of the remainder of the post simply because it is so dripping with hatred for those who have a different opinion than E.G.C. does. Part of my pointing to this section at all is to show the hypocrisy in their statement, yes, but also to make clear that those paragraphs, where Mr. Olbermann is referred to as a "low life douche bag" who is "chicken-hearted and scared" of those who disagree with him, is the exact antithesis of intelligent debate and civilized discourse. And could the same thing not be said about O'Reilly, who cuts off phone calls from and yells over the speaking of those who disagree with him. Additionally, saying that MSNBC is losing viewers is entirely false. On Election Night, MSNBC's programs had significant increases in their viewers--Keith actually had about 66-75% of Bill O'Reilly's audience, and MSNBC had several time slots that night that outdid the programs on Fox News at the same time. I apologize for ranting on for so long, and I thank anyone who read the whole of the post--which has taken me about an hour to write. I think that it would do all FR readers good to read this in its entirety, as it is a look into the mind and opinions of the average liberal individual. I look forward to future opportunities to give this insight, assuming that I'm not declared a UEC and shipped to Gitmo before I have a chance to do so. ;)

[E.G.C.]

OK first off, when someone refers to us, that reference seems to somehow imply that this is a liberal majority nation. That's absolute nonsense. This whether anyone wants to believe it or not is still a conservative majority nation.

Secondly, whether anyone wants to believe it or not, these news media organizations aren't our friends, they're our enemies and I'm going to continue to address these issues. Mr. Olbermann is not someone you want to defend on a conservative news forum. His audience is shrinking and everybody knows it. This isn't the kind of person I want governing my community, state or country.

And quite frankly this Democrat Congress isn't going to last very long. Tax and spend is not something people are willing to go for.

My problem with Mr. Olbermann is he seems to think he and his kind are the United States of America and the rest of us aren't. I'm not the only person who feels this way. there are far more who agree with me than agree differently. that's all there is to it.

[airborne]

When I said "Intelligent debate is healthy and informative", I didn't mean to imply that everyone here partook in the exercise. ;^)

[E.G.C.]

And something else too. the way liberals see it any opinion they disagree with is always going to be considered hate speech. To me this tells me that they have a problem with people who write and/or express differing political opinions.

Nobody forces you to read or to visit FR or any other conservative website. If you don't like what people are saying or reading than don't read or listen to it.

The last thing this nation wants or needs is people telling us we can or can't say. This isn't China or Cuba, this is America.

[E.G.C.]

One more thing, those who know me well enough recognize that what did man did is not my style on anyone else's style for that matter I'm glad to see that Jim is working to get him thrown off this website.

We've had way too many cases of conservatives being blamed everytime one of their own does something bad. And there were call in the Clinton adminstration to have it's political opponents and adversaries spied on with programs such as Carnivore and Key Encryption.

This was an adminstration that showed itself to be very poor sports when it came to people blowing the whistle on them. I've heard of several freepers who were paid visits by the Secret Service for daring to blow the whistle on the Clinton Admistration and their unethical and illegal activities.

The Democrats and their willing accomplishes in the MSM are very poor sports when it comes to people questioning their actions. And, if they could theywould gladly missuse and abuse their power to spy on their political opponents and adversaries.

These aren't the kind of people you want to be taking up for here on FR.

[Dmitri Willguard]

First off, I apologize for my post getting lumped together like that. Apparently running it through the spell-check on here destroyed the line breaks I had put in. It was far easier to read when I typed it.

Secondly, E.G.C., the way you speak to me about how liberals don't seem to like people speaking their mind is highy hypocritical. President Bush and his administration have said that anyone who questions their decisions is akin to a Nazi appeaser/person who would tolerate slavery pre-Civil War/etc.

And the President did, at one point, suggest that it was inappropriate to think that any actions by the US or its troops during the war on terror can be similar to the actions of those we are fighting.

I'm not going to try to debate whether this country is more conservative or liberal. I don't have any independent studies to prove my opinion, and you haven't presented any to prove yours. The more rational side of me suggests that the country is fairly evenly split, but I can't prove this any more than I can prove that the country is more liberal or you can prove the country is more conservative.

Finally, E.G.C., I don't believe you actually tried to argue anything that my long post said, aside from saying that it was unwise for me to defend Mr. Olbermann on this website. I already knew that, by the way; I was well aware that this site would have people that would flame me for my opinions, but I was hoping there would be just as many who were interested in truly enlightened discussion, as well.

I am not trying to force anyone into having the same opinions as I do, and I tried to make that clear in my post. Believe it or not, E.G.C., we Democrats want this country to be secure just as you Republicans do. The only difference between the two parties, at least where National Security is concerned, is the means by which we want to reach those ends.

Finally, I would ask that E.G.C.--and all others who read my posts--please do me one favor, and try to present some argument to the factual points I made when replying to my posts. I'm willing to re-post the essay with the proper line breaks, if there is any interest in my doing so.

[beckett]

Now, before you call me paranoid, I must ask...

It is paranoia. Are you really suggesting that a Republican president would arrest Noam Chomsky under the provisions of MCA06? Or a Democratic one would imprison Ann Coulter? Patent nonsense.

The old saw you cite - composed by a famous conservative, by the way - about absolute power corrupting absolutely, does not apply to the president of the United States, because he has never wielded absolute power and, as long as the US remains a constitutional democracy, he (or she) never will. Chomsky and Coulter, protected by the Bill of Rights, are safe. They'll never be tossed into prison on a presidential whim. If any president were mentally disturbed enough to try it, the ultimate check and balance -- an election -- would act as the corrective it is meant to be.

But in times of war, special powers must be assigned to the Commander in Chief in the interests of the welfare of the entire American people. So it was for Lincoln, and for FDR, and so also it must be for any president, from either party, who commands the US military effort against global terror. MCA06 concerns itself with enemy combatants as defined by those in charge of waging the war. If you cannot muster the confidence in those so charged to apply the criteria fairly, then I can only question whether anyone could ever exercise legitimate power, however delimited, in a manner which you would find satisfactory.

[E.G.C.]

Well, thanks. I think I've made my points very clear in this discussion.

The truth of the matter is Clinton wasn't a good sport about people questioning his actions. Now, like it or not that's the reality. Bush has never said any such thing that you've tried to imply

There's major differneces between the Republicans and the Democrats. The big differnece is we recognize where the real threat is and are working to neutralize those threats.

The sooner the Dems realize this, the better off we'll be as a nation.