Lawrence Thrives, Countdown's Demise

In June of last year, I wrote a post "Welcome Back Keith Olbermann And Goodbye Lawrence O'Donnell.
 Keith's show on Current didn't last a year, somewhere, Mr. Olbermann became confused as to the relative importance of the message and the messenger.  One of the most important elections in history and Keith's voice is silent.  Lawrence O'Donnell's show The Last Word occupied the same time slot as the Keith Olbermann show, my feeling at the time was Mr. O'Donnell couldn't compete.   I'd like to eat my crow in a pie please.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

On the other hand, Lawrence O'Donnell's The Last Word, has blossomed into a warm, informative and enjoyable look into America's politics.  "The Last Word" is also tearing up the ratings, even beating Fox in the 25-54 demographic.  Kudo's to Mr. O'Donnell and his staff, for creating challenging and quality programing, that doesn't require fact checking. 

The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Last Word Blog

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The Young Turks on Current TV

Cenk Uygur (pronounced JAY-nk YOU-ger) the cofounder and Host of the informative, liberal and progressive: The Young Turks is coming to Current TV Tomorrow at 4:00 pm Pacific just before Countdown with Keith Olbermann.  Cenk is energetic and a liberal progressive to the bone, I've always enjoyed listening to his views on the news. 

Alan Grayson shared an interview he did with Cenk just after the democratic rout in 2010.  Unlike most commentators at the time Cenk did not attribute the republican victories to the essential GOP philosophy  of cutting spending and lowering taxes to the wealthy.   The 2010 rout instead was a democratic failure to support policy for the 99%:

Grayson, visibly downbeat about his election results, explained that the reason for his defeat was the inability of Democrats nationally to get out the vote. “If Democrats don’t vote,” he told Uygur, “Democrats can’t win.” Explaining that turnout had fallen 20% for Republicans and 60% for Democrats in his district since 2008, he argued that “Democrats are saddened and demoralized by this policy of appeasement” that he believes always leads to defeat where compromise is not an option. Compromise, he continued, was not possible with Republicans because their entire strategy is “no.”

“There is no ‘center left,’” he continued to argue, such that being a centrist or attempting to ignore extremes was a losing policy. Calling the campaign a “national disaster,” Grayson believes his defeat was not a local issue, but a national epidemic of malaise on the left. “Our voters went on strike,” he concluded, “and we have to win them back by accomplishing things for ordinary people.”

Find the correct channel and time to watch The Young Turks on Current TV in your area here by entering your zip code

Related articles

• The Young Turks Debuts On Current TV Monday! (crooksandliars.com)
• Alan Grayson: Cenk's Back (huffingtonpost.com)
• The Young Turks With Cenk Uygur To Debut On Current TV Dec. 5 (mediaite.com)
• Cenk Uygur on His New Show at Current, Bringing a New Generation to TV News, and His Pop Culture Obsessions (thinkprogress.org)

Welcome back Keith Olbermann and goodbye Lawrence O'Donnel

Keith Olbermann, Welcome Back

It's been a long 5 months since we last saw Keith Olbermann on countdown.  He's back in his usual robust and fluent rapid fire delivery and  displayed no ill effects from his "vacation".  There are no other newscasters that demand so much of their listeners and I'll admit my Olbermann was a little rusty.  But Keith displayed no such rustiness and displayed his usual proficiency with a great group of guests, including John Dean, Michael Moore and Markos Moulitsas.

The only criticism I have of the new show, is the difference in sound levels between the newscast and the commercials.  Seems like the volume more than doubled whenever it was time to sell something.  Easy to fix, I just muted them all.  They also need to tone the organ music way down during the "worst person's" segment. 
   Congratulations and welcome back Keith Olbermann you were greatly missed.