The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

St. Lawrence the Sanctimonious

Posted on | May 4, 2011 | 10 Comments

Since taking over the 8 p.m. spot vacated by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell has mounted an extraordinary effort to achieve what many would consider an impossible goal: Being more absurdly self-righteous than Olbermann.

Tuesday night, O’Donnell may have reached that mark by asserting that John Kerry was the gold standard in national security policy:

“Now is the time for the Bush-Cheney fanatics – the people who created the war on terror and who got so much of it wrong – to listen to John Kerry and to listen to President Barack Obama teach them how to fight terrorists.”

(Via Memeorandum.) Is O’Donnell serious? Did he even listen to his own video clip, when Kerry said that fighting terrorism “requires cooperation around the world”? In point of fact, although the U.S. shoveled out all kinds of foreign aid to Pakistan, we did not get that kind of cooperation. It wasn’t “cooperation” that resulted in finding Osama bin Laden: It was the “enhanced interrogation” of detainees captured by the CIA and U.S. military during the Bush presidency — interrogations that Democrats condemned, involving terrorists they insisted were being detained illegally. And the raid that killed bin Laden was conducted by military Special Operations troops (a branch of the service increased under Donald Rumsfeld’s tenure as Secretary of Defense), not by “law enforcement,” and certainly not by the European allies that Kerry kept insisting should be granted veto authority over U.S. policy.

All of which is to say that the facts are 180 degrees out of phase with O’Donnell’s argument. With complete disregard for facts, O’Donnell evidently believes that counterfactual things can be made true merely by his say-so. “Fiat lux!”

My God, did you ever believe you’d see such a thing? O’Donnell has got me pining for the Good Old Days of Keith Olbermann!

But some things remain constant at MSNBC, especially the familiar douchebaggery of Chris Matthews who, amid his otherwise giddy celebration of the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s successful assassination of a Muslim leader, described Dick Cheny as a “sadist” :

Did you see that? It was a complete non sequitur. They were sitting there praising all Obama’s wonders when Howard Fineman mentioned Dick Cheney, so out of the blue, for no discernible reason whatsoever, Matthews says: “There’s a difference between being cold blooded — I think presidents have to be cold blooded — and being a sadist.” Howard Fineman then begins to say something else, but Matthews interrupts: “I was referring to Cheney, of course.”

Fineman, certainly no fan of Dick Cheney, wisely ignored that idiotic remark. You really have to feel sorry for the guests on Matthews’s show, who have to sit there and be polite while he blabs out that kind of nonsense.

UPDATE: Welcome, Don Surber readers!


Category: Barack Obama, Military, MSNBC, Pakistan, Terrorism, Video

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