Keith Olbermann delivers a special comment on Countdown about the catch-phrases used to promote the War on Terror such as "Stay the Course", "Cut and Run", and George Bush's new Nazi appeasement smear on Barack Obama. Later, Chris Matthews from Hardball discusses his dustup with conservative talk show host Kevin James. -------------------------------------------- On Friday's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, guest host Rachel Maddow asked Chris Matthews about his refusal to allow talk show host Kevin James to blindly repeat White House talking points without having any idea what those buzzwords meant...Matthews understands how fundamentally detrimental these buzzwords are to a functioning democracy (and before you retort, no one is harder on him than I am, and he rarely allows them unchallenged on his program--he's far more likely to be swayed by the perceived power--or attractiveness--of the person than the words they speak). MADDOW: Do you think this is something new? Do you think this is something specific to our current, contemporaneous politics that we have these sort of buzzwords and bumper sticker slogans, whether it's 'appeasement,' or 'fight over there so we don't fight them here' or 'they hate our freedom,' any of these terms. Are they designed to be repeated and not to be interrogated? MATTHEWS: Well, just look at the way people are basically exterminated or tried to be exterminated. Bill Maher makes a comment --which may not have been the right comment--but he was making a point he was trying to make, about stand back weaponry compared to people killing themselves. You can argue about the niceties of that. The Dixie Chicks say something about the war—and they shouldn't have said it overseas, but they said it. The shutting up of opposition is critical to running a country in an undemocratic way, let's put it that way. And so you have buzzwords like 'appeasers' or 'cut and run' and they're used over and over again by the most mindless people. The trouble with them is they tend to work. The dittoheads can use them. Anyone can use them and they seem to have the same effect. They cause people to run from criticism www.crooksandliars.com

seriously...when did chris matthews grow a set?  did i miss something?  no smoke blowing but i think jon stewart broke his heart the last time on the daily show.  well, whatever...bravo and enjoy.  oh and btw, anyone see the clip with o'reilly and heraldo?  heraldo sounded human almost the entire clip but realised he's part of the highly paid fox undead at the end.  how does anyone take the channel seriously?