MSNBC: Olbermann & Maddow Melt-down - Tubby and Butch at DefCon 6

Brad Wilmouth at NewsBusters reports on the MSNBC Meltdown with Keith Olbermann.

Tubby and Butch are hard at it - righting the deck chairs on the listing ship of fools that is and has been MSNBC or McCain Shall Not Be Considered.

From the start of this Presidential Campaign MSNBC has leagued with Daily Kos and Huffington Post to prop up the limited resume and gravitas of Senator Obama's run for the White House and Verdict has been dismal for the Peacock.

Here is a baseball card collector and a class snitch's take on the Russian Invasion of Georgia.


OLBERMANN: All right. Both McCain and Obama made statements today. Obama coming off that, what is now, a semi-vacation I suppose. Apart from the policy particulars, what was the difference in the approach? What do we hear about the, see about these two men just based on how they took to their podiums today?

MADDOW: What was striking is how consistent McCain is being toward Russia. He's taken every opportunity on foreign policy in this campaign to take a confrontational stance toward Russia. And so, as this war has erupted, and as the international community and Senator Obama are reacting by saying this war needs to be brought to a very swift end, this needs to be worked out in ways other than through force, the international community needs to be united to stop this and to solve these problems in ways other than they're being addressed right now; McCain, instead, is plowing ahead with this "Confront Russia, confront Russia, confront Russia." This is an extension of him wanting to throw Russia out of the G8 and the other sort of belligerent statements he's made there. I don't exactly know how he plans to back up these threats, but he's sticking with this confrontation plan.

OLBERMANN: Well, to that point, though, when it becomes obvious that there's nothing with which to back these threats up, given how, essentially impotent we have been rendered, militarily, put on politically by President Bush, what sense does saber rattling by McCain actually make if it is given a second thought by a voter or just a citizen?

MADDOW: Yes, well, it sounds good at first pass, which I think is what he's counting on. I think he's counting on Americans not being totally clear on the idea that Georgia's a country and not just a state. I think he's counting on the idea that when America wants to be tough, that we would use our military in every instance.

Honestly, what I think this brings into very sharp relief is how scary the prospect of a continued Bush foreign policy is -- because right now, we could be doing something if the idea of American diplomacy and American international leadership, and American moral authority were something other than a punch line. Then, we really could be doing something here. But because we don't have any of those assets at our disposable anymore after eight years of what the Bush administration has done to them, we're left with this empty, "We'll find a combat brigade somewhere" rattling that everybody knows is bluster.

OLBERMANN: Right. It's the line from King Lear. "I'm "I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to avenge myself on you, but I'll think of something really mean."

MADDOW: Yeah.

Tubby, You Culture Vulture! Actually it is: "I will do such things--
- ''What they are, yet I know not,
but they shall be the terrors of the earth." . . . But what the heck, Yeah. Thought the virile Maddow would have had the lines at fingertip. Rhodes Scholarships must be easy to snag with the right clout and a deft scribble or two on the old boilerplate.