Gotta love Olbermann!!

His commentary regarding the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and the death of habeas corpus is one of the most powerful pieces from a journalist in quite some time.

I really enjoyed his comment here on #3, the insane, racist woman from Faux News, funny stuff!

Norm, don't use 'welsh', use 'welch'. Why? Well... think about the verb 'to gyp [someone]'. You'd be inclined not to use it because it's racist, right? Now what do you think the origin of 'to welsh' is?

that's a racial slur, guy. i'm welsh born, meaning from wales, in britain.

that's a reference to us.

The term is welch and not Welsh, Welsh is what people from Wales are known as. Kinda racist of you.

Welch it is, and no offense intended. Interesting, when you type welch into the OED it brings up welsh. In fact in several dictionaries welch wasn't listed at all or as also used. I don't think I've ever personally used the term welsh in that context always using welch instead and was surprised what my perusal of the dictionary uncovered. It seems to me though that welch is just a euphemistic substitute, but apparently not taken as an offense. Perhaps a search of my thesaurus would reveal a better choice of words to describe T. Boone Pickens. Nominations are open.

welsh

Main Entry: welsh
Pronunciation: \ˈwelsh, ˈwelch\ Variant(s): also welch \ˈwelch\ Function: intransitive verb Etymology: probably from Welsh, adjective Date: 1905 1sometimes offensive : to avoid payment —used with on2sometimes offensive : to break one's word : renege — welsh·er noun sometimes offensive

Source: Merriam-Webster Online dictionary

The consensus seems to be that "welsh" used in this sense is an ethnic (not really "racist") slur. It isn't really avoiding the slur to use "welch" since, ultimately, that term derives from the the same source. I would guess that neither Olbermann nor Norm were using the term while connecting it with Welsh people - which isn't to say that should use the term. As I kid, I used 'gyp' all the time, never knowing what its origin was.

oops,

Norm beat me to it.

Pickens - douchebag? Nah, not sufficiently descriptive.

Asswipe, sleazeball, shithead. ... - same problem.

Republican - now we're getting somewhere.

One logical fallacy that Keith over looked:

A. The U.S. was attacked on 9-11-01 by a group of people, the majority of which was composed of people from Saudi Arabia.

B. We attack Iraq and depose (A.K.A. sentence to death) the leader of that country to get revenge for "A" above.

http://boskolives.wordpress.com/

I'm incredibly tired of the "we haven't been attacked since 9/11" line.

Even if you just confine it to U.S. soil (and disregard the kidnappings, beheadings, and bombings of U.S. Civilians in foreign countries), we have been attacked at least twice that I can think of off the top of my head.

There were the Anthrax attacks just one week later (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001anthraxattacks), and then there was the Beltway Sniper attacks just over a year later (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltwaysniperattacks).

I'm sure many people will say, "Yes but we're talking about being attacked by foreigners." But that doesn't really jibe with the idea that we've been made "safer."

When was the last time there was a foreign terrorist attack before 9/11? If you count the Cole, then you have to count the more recent embassy attacks, the roadside bombs, the kidnappings, etc. If you count Oklahoma, then you have to count the two I mentioned above.

Then there's the whole "We've stopped XX number of attacks since 9/11." Even ignoring the obvious errors in that line of thinking, there is (again) a failure to put it in any frame of historical perspective. The number means nothing if you can not compare it to numbers pre-9/11. And here's the thing... you don't want for the new number to be higher than the old number. If it is, it means that we've become an even bigger target... which means that we are not "safer."

We haven't been attacked. That is a pretty remarkable fact (except that "we" includes Americans in Iraq, who are attacked every day). But then again it seems we're assuming that anti-American terrorists, you know the kind which are "detemrined to strike within the U.S.", had a whole string of effective attacks planned for the U.S. after 9/11. But maybe they didn't. Maybe they had some ideas but needed a lot of luck to pull them off, just like they needed to get lucky on 9/11. And maybe they thought we wouldn't invade Afghanistan, and that they would have to go all the way across the Atlantic to kill Americans. Didn't quite turn out they way they had feared or hopes. And perhaps Al-Qaida really is a two bit operation that can only very rarely extend its power outside of the Middle East and South Asia.

These people are all bad, but Olbermann is bashing of them sounds a bit shrill. Does he have to do the sarcastic voice imitation?