The 'Worst Person in the World' guy is put on hold - msnbc.com

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KEITH OLBERMANN is suspended, indefinitely, for making campaign donations made in the fall: http://bit.ly/bR4A3g

Olbermann acknowledged the donations in a statement to Politico, saying he gave the maximum legal donation of $2,400 to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords and Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, who waged an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate against Tea Party standard-bearer Rand Paul.

Like most news organizations, NBC News, parent of msnbc TV, prohibits political contributions by its journalists without prior approval of the president. (Msnbc.com, a joint venture of NBC Universal and Microsoft, also has a policy against its journalists contributing to political campaigns.)

Ha! ... Ha ha! ...  Ahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa! 

Sorry, I'm still laughing at something I read earlier: I read that he is MSNBC's biggest (highest rated) star. Not sure if I'm more stunned by his continued status on MSNBC, or that the network suspended him despite that. I mean, it's not that he never has anything of note to say, but he's such a BABY! Who grew the nerves to act on this? I guess they had to, since Politico already published the facts.

I wonder if this is just a publicity stunt, in essence, and will be for a week? Or just a few days? 

I hope his hair can stand being out of the studio makeup (and hair) chair and fending for itself for a while.

- jR (AirFarceOne on Twitter)

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Respectfulness beats crassness: Dan Webster beats Alan Grayson in a landslide

If caring means being a vicious attention hound, then Grayson is a saint

"Most of the time, negative campaigning works, and a lot of people cringed when I said I would run a positive campaign. We just felt like it was the right thing to do," Webster said. "I'm not going there to change places with the Democrats. We've got to do things differently. We've got to change the process."

 

Grayson called Webster to congratulate him. In a concession speech to supporters at a downtown nightclub, Grayson said he also asked Webster focus on the downtrodden.

 

"I asked Dan Webster to spend the next two years in office fulfilling that 3,000-year-old promise to feed the hungry, to heal the sick, to shelter the homeless, to reach out to the people who are less fortunate than others, and remember that we are all judged by the least of us," Grayson said. "That's what we tried to do during our time in office. We tried to show people what it was like to have a congressman who cares."

Apparently, what he cared most about was making Republicans, all foes, and especially Dan Webster, look like the sons and daughters of Satan. That, when he wasn't busy requesting that U.S. Attorney General Holder to bring charges up against the operators of mycongressmanisnuts.com . Thanks for caring, Mr. Grayson! We'll, uh, miss your, uh... oh, why even try? Hey Ailing Grayskull, move to Cuba, you creep!

 

Read the whole Orlando Sentinel piece here.

 

- jR

Officials: Yemeni terrorist group was doing test run last month sending luggage with no passenger

Getting into the minds of terrorists: Those looking into earlier, unattended luggage (sent with no tied passenger headed with them to the same location) that headed to Chicago from Yemen said they thought those items might have been test runs for a terror effort. Now, they think they were right.

Earlier Flight May Have Been Dry Run for Plotters

American intelligence officials in September intercepted several packages containing books, papers, CDs and other household items shipped to Chicago from Yemen and considered the possibility that the parcels might be a test run for a terrorist attack, two officials said Monday night.

Now the intelligence officials believe that the shipments, whose hour-by-hour locations could be tracked by the sender on the shippers' Web sites, may have been used to plan the route and timing for two printer cartridges packed with explosives that were sent from Yemen and intercepted in Britain and Dubai on Friday.

In September, after American counterterrorism agencies received information linking the packages to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terror network's branch in Yemen, intelligence officers stopped the shipments in transit and searched them, said the officials. ...

- jR

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AOPA eBrief: Brazil's Embraer opening jet factory in Melbourne, Fla.

Just when you thought U.S. manufacturing was on a straight path downwards -- if you really thought that -- there's this, from the aviation industry.

A twist on the usually reversed cost problem of manufacturing in the U.S.: Embraer's new facility in Melbourne, Florida is expected to cut costs due to its proximity to the jet maker's suppliers in the U.S. and Canada.

Managing director named for Embraer's first U.S. business jet plant
Aerospace manufacturing veteran Phil Krull will be at the helm when the new Embraer business jet assembly plant opens at Melbourne International Airport in Florida. The 150,000-square-foot facility is expected to build eight business jets a year at a cost that could be lower than planes made in Brazil due to the new plant's proximity to its U.S. and Canadian parts manufacturers. AviationWeek.com (Nov 01, 2010)

(AviationWeek via AOPA eBrief)
- jR  (corrected the title, some fixes)

Stewart-Colbert Rally Mixes Sober Message with Silly People - Newsmax (AP)

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was ... a success? Yeah, sure. Why not. Proved a lawn full of mostly liberal types can be rational. This is part of the AP article from Newsmax.com (look up title to the read complete article, they don't do links well, at least not for mobile devices).

Stewart-Colbert Rally Mixes Fun with Sober Message

Saturday, 30, October 2010 07:06:50

NEW YORK (AP) — Jon Stewart was right. As promised, his rally was fun.

Then, at the end, he took a few moments for "some sincerity." For some viewers, those clearly heartfelt remarks on the innate goodness of Americans may have upstaged everything that went before.

Fun was about as specific as Stewart had gotten in the weeks leading up to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, which he hosted and produced with fellow Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert.

Exactly what the rally would be, and what big names might show up for it, had been a guessing game for fans of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," as well as the media, for weeks beforehand — at least until Wednesday, when a few names leaked.

On Saturday, viewers of Comedy Central's live telecast — and online streaming — of the three-hour shindig saw a dandy music-and-comedy concert with an inarguable social message. It was staged on Washington's National Mall, with the U.S. Capitol as the glorious backdrop.

The overarching theme was to redeclare Americans' ability to get along and work together, regardless of their ideological differences. And to chastise the media and politicians for promoting polarization.

To put this message across comedically, the rally harnessed the familiar on-air personalities of Stewart, who, as anchor of the "Daily Show" satirical newscast, radiates bemused reasonableness, and Colbert, who inhabits a bloviating right-wing pundit on "The Colbert Report."

Their make-believe clashing in comic bits during the rally was exemplified when Colbert defended the value of unreasonable fear, as in the Garden of Eden.

"If Eve had just had a healthy phobia of snakes, she would not have eaten that apple and cursed us all with original sin," he blustered. "Then I'd be able to walk around naked everywhere."

"You're just creating bogeymen," Stewart protested.

"Bogeymen?" Colbert erupted in alarm. "Where?"

Later, Stewart introduced Yosef (once known as pop star Cat Stevens), who sang his gentle 1970s anti-war anthem, "Peace Train," until Colbert brought out Ozzy Osbourne, who ripped into his classic hit with lyrics including, "I'm going off the rails on a crazy train."

These dueling songs led to a standoff, which was settled when the O'Jays arrived to perform "Love Train."

Other musical guests included the Roots, John Legend, Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow, Jeff Tweedy, Mavis Staples and Tony Bennett, who sang "America the Beautiful."

But the proceedings never strayed too far from funny business, however pointed.

Addressing a crowd in the tens of thousands, Stewart reminded them: "It doesn't matter what we say or do here today. It matters what is reported about what we said or did here today."

Demonstrating how the media could slant a given event in wildly different ways, he let two of his "Daily Show" correspondents take a whack.

... Stewart took time for some closing remarks and, playing it serious, attempted to explain the rally's purpose — in his mind, at least. ...

Americans, he said, do "impossible things every day that are only made possible through the little, reasonable compromises we all make."

But these are compromises the current crop of politicians are unwilling to make and the media are unwilling to recognize.

"The image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us through a fun house mirror," he said.

Americans work together to get things done every day, he said.

"The only place we don't is here," he said, pointing behind him at the Capitol building, "or on cable TV."

As a stirring pep talk and reality check, Stewart's remarks were the sanest moments on TV in memory — and the surprise many viewers were seeking from the rally.

Comedy Central is owned by Viacom.

Online: http://www.rallytorestoresanityandorfear.com

EDITOR'S NOTE — Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org

Newsmax Home

Points go to the dueling fakes for being sane, though typically more harsh on the right than against the left. The rally was less crass, from what I have read, than the sloppy words and piles of signs from OneNation. The inherent theme was, as the shows' overtones also convey, that modern liberalism maintains the majority and 'sane' view, since that is where the two comics' views sit, clearly. But it was less crass than many town halls and rallies and political campaign speeches within the last three years.

- jR (AirFarceOne on Twitter)

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