Hey, That’s My Name

Two of my favorite people to listen to on the issue of veterans and how McCain didn’t address those issues in his speech Thursday night.

I’m a HUGE Rachel Maddow fan. I’ve mentioned her several times on this blog because, frankly, while I follow a crazy number of news feeds, watch a little cable news and even have a friend working for a political campaign, I actually get most of my news from The Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio. I’ve been listening to various shows and formats she’s gone through the liberal radio network for the past four years. She is wonderful at mining the news for interesting, quirky and relevent stories and on weeks when one of us (meaning myself or Rachel) goes on vacation, I feel less clued into what’s going on in the world.

Rachel has been working her way up the TV food chain for some time now, guesting on various shows on CNN and MSNBC, but even before the New York Times saw fit to profile Maddow, it was clear that important people at MSNBC had taken a shine to her (not least of which was their star, Keith Olbermann). Rachel was a constant guest during MSNBC’s primary coverage, she became a regular guest on all of the primetime evening shows, she became the de facto guest host for Olbermann’s show Countdown and David Gregory’s Race to the White House and a few months ago, Air America began simulcasting Race during the first hour of Rachel’s show – which meant that she was a constant member of Gregory’s panel.

Today on Daily Kos and on his show, Keith Olbermann broke the news that, at long last, MSNBC will be gifting Rachel Maddow with her own cable news show. She will be filling the 8PM CST slot that follows Countdown with Keith Olbermann, taking the place of Dan Abram show The Verdict. In their dialogue on Countdown, Olbermann and Maddow hinted that the shows may bleed into each other, perhaps with the two (who are clearly friendly) bantering about the news of the day. At the current time, Maddow’s show does not have a name or a format. They’ll need to fix that quick, as she’s scheduled to premiere on September 9, after the party conventions wrap up.

It’s also worth noting that Rachel will continue to host her radio show on Air America. She’s long reassured her listening audience that she would intend to stay on the air if she got her own TV show, saying that if Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly can do it, so can she. She’ll just do it better.

Congratulations, Rachel. Cable news just got a lot more informed.

In case you haven’t heard about it yet, yesterday McCain advisor Charlie Black stepped in it big time. He basically said that another terrorist attack on the U.S. would likely help the McCain campaign. You argue about whether or not that’s true (ginning up the fear machine sure worked for the Republicans back in 2002 and 2004), but you can’t really argue that that really isn’t something that someone affiliated with a presidential candidate should say. In last night’s episode of Countdown, former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke indicated why this is such a big gaffe. Here’s a snippet of what he said, as well as the video of the segment:

Well, Charlie Black knows a lot about politics but he doesn’t know much about terrorism. If he did, he would know that Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and all the al Qaeda leadership, watch U.S. politics very closely. We’ve even had cases where in interviews, bin Laden quoted opinion polls from European public opinion polls.

So, yes, they understand that they can manipulate politics as they tried to in the Spanish election with the attacks there. And to say, “Yes, you can manipulate our politics, come and do it,” is an invitation that the McCain campaign shouldn’t be anywhere near.