Title: Great Keith Olberman rant - Slams Rumsfeld but good :) Source:
youtube URL Source:http://utube Published:Sep 1, 2006 Author:Keith Oberman Post Date:2006-09-01 18:01:02 by Jethro Tull Keywords:None Views:848 Comments:72
I would hope that everyone would not accept the tone of this mans "dissent" and equate it with fact.
It is burdened with errors that the writers well know, making it shallow intellectually at best.
Knowingly omitting well known facts, trying to stifle others, and worst of all maligning others for doing the very same thing he is doing is rather arrogant.
Again, disregard the tone, that is his weapon, not what he has to say. Read a transcript of his rant and you will feel quite differently.
"It is burdened with errors that the writers well know, making it shallow intellectually at best."
Do you have an example of this please so we know what sort of error you speak of? His comments actually seem understated and give Rummy far more leeway then many of us here would give him.
It is hard to know what you are getting at without an example, thanks.
Do you have an example of this please so we know what sort of error you speak of?
Mike..
If you did not "catch" the errors then you were not paying attention, or you are short handed in history. May I suggest you read a transcript and find the errors yourself, it will perhaps broaden your history background which seems to be sorely lacking.
I am quite fine on history. But history is much like politics, not only is it distorted by the victor writing the history books, but everyone has an opinion about it.
I am well aware there are original historical sources and secondary historical sources as well. I merely asked you a question meant to ascertain where you are coming from in regards to your comment. I know quite a bit about the events before, after and during the Great Patriotic War/WW II. You need not worry about that.
I am well aware there are original historical sources and secondary historical sources as well. I merely asked you a question meant to ascertain where you are coming from in regards to your comment. I know quite a bit about the events before, after and during the Great Patriotic War/WW II. You need not worry about that.
Mike...
Traanslation, brief and simple...You indeed are short handed on history.
I might suggest you in particular disregard the tone and sift thru the written transcript.
By the way, the gentleman reminded me very much of the delivery of Hitler. Like Hitler the people understood nothing but were aroused by the tone of the speech. Think about it, are you in that group???
I might suggest you in particular disregard the tone and sift thru the written transcript.
that's good advice especially since i tend to miss a lot of the content in video. one thing i did notice was Olberman's referring to the US as a democracy, but i'm sure the errors you caught were much more egregious. what is the main disinfo that you're referring to, Cyni?
what is the main disinfo that you're referring to, Cyni?
A transcript of his "speech" will read totally different than what his "tone" delivered. I remember listening to Hitler during the 1930s, you did not have to understand German to gather the tone of what he was saying. His audiences were entralled. If you read William L. Shirer he tells you he was there, understood German and came away amazed that the people loved the "tone" of his delivery, knew nothing of the content.
More than once Shirer says he was appalled that people could not grasp what Hitler was saying, rather they were in a frenzy over theatrics.
Do you recall Oberman mentioning the 1930s, very briefly???? What did he leave out???
Do you recall something to the effect that England knew in the 30s that Hitler was not a threat??? That was what Chamberlain kept saying.
Oberman very nicely left out "WHO" was working feverishly to help rearm Germany, who allowed thousands of Germans to train for years in their country. Chamberlain knew who and never mentioned them, so do the writers for Oberman.
Dredging up memories of Hitler is always a winner when you want to excite an audience. Just never mention the other evil people that ensured his survival. The chief of the German General staff, General Hans von Seeckt, drew up the German battle plan for the next invasion of France, in 1919, three months after the end of WW1. Russia helped them to rearm, Hitler was the evil man that happened along to bring fruition. Oberman condemns England, never mentions Russia.
Oberman never mentions that Murrow was a champion for Alger Hiss....Sins of omissions.
Oh. I didn't know that either.
The transcript:
Keith Olberman on Rummy's Speech
Published: Aug 31, 2006
The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.
Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.
Mr. Rumsfeld's remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis--and the sober contemplation--of every American.
For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.
Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.
It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.
In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld's speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril--with a growing evil--powerful and remorseless.
That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld's, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the "secret information." It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld's -- questioning their intellect and their morality.
That government was England's, in the 1930's.
It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.
It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.
It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions -- its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.
The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.
Most relevant of all -- it "knew" that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.
That critic's name was Winston Churchill.
Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.
History -- and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England -- have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty -- and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.
Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.
Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.
His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.
It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.
But back to today's Omniscient ones.
That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.
And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.
Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience -- about Osama Bin Laden's plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein's weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina's impact one year ago -- we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their "omniscience" as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.
But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.
Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have -- inadvertently or intentionally -- profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.
And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer's New Clothes?
In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?
The confusion we -- as its citizens-- must now address, is stark and forbidding.
But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart -- that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.
The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.
And about Mr. Rumsfeld's other main assertion, that this country faces a "new type of fascism."
As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.
This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.
Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.
But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: "confused" or "immoral."
Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954. "We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular."
I was drawn to this thread while reading another poster's email to me at home. I have read the entire thread and my comment is merely, "Age brings history, if you retain your memory!"
You and I have lived long enough to know who Edward R. Murrow REALLY was ... and anyone quoting that man's words is not to be believed on any level.
Not mine! WWII and the Holocaust are taught throughout the Los Angeles Unified City School District, trust me. They may never learn to calculate the interest they will one day pay for their cars, but they know all about those years, and what happened in a few evil places in europe. Schoolchildren may not know their own family's history, but they know all about other people's history.
sidenote: My 19 year old tells me that the History Channel is referred to as the Hitler Channel by his age mates.
Not mine! WWII and the Holocaust are taught throughout the Los Angeles Unified City School District, trust me. They may never learn to calculate the interest they will one day pay for their cars, but they know all about those years, and what happened in a few evil places in europe. Schoolchildren may not know their own family's history, but they know all about other people's history.
sidenote: My 19 year old tells me that the History Channel is referred to as the Hitler Channel by his age mates.
The one year my children went to public school, I was in the hall and noticed a door decorated with, O, ten national flags. US, Italy etc, and the Israel flag.
There was a little commotion as the speaker of the day was an elderly Jewish gentleman comming to lecture the students on the Holocaust.
I wonder if Eagleview Middle School in Colorado Springs would allow a Plaestine flag on their door, or allow her to speak to the students their??
Not even if half the students were Palestinian refugees.
I agree. I thought of asking the teacher where the Palestine flag was, and where the Arab side of things were going to be shown, but the several cop cars that are now attatched out side of all schools deterred me.
Shold have bitched a fit, I guess, but had a roof to patch, or something.
All the teacher had to do was to say I was a terrorist. (She was a Barney the Purple dinosaur Ninney, BTW).