Maybe this explains Barney Frank's sore-winner tirade on election night. It won't be all that hard to investigate. The whole fiasco was well documented in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and Frank was there claiming that there was no problem.

Keith Olbermann has been suspended for undisclosed legal donations to three Democratic candidates. Conservatives I've heard, including Bill Kristol, at the link, have criticized the suspension. There are reports that he isn't wanted back.

Here's what Kristol has to say:

First, he donated money to candidates he liked. He didn’t take money, or favors, in a way that influenced his reporting.

Second, he’s not a reporter. It’s an opinion show. If Olbermann wants to put his money where his mouth is, more power to him.

Third, GE, the corporate parent of MSNBC, gives money to political organizations. GE executives and, I’m sure, NBC executives give money. Why can’t Olbermann?

All good points. I never watch Olbermann's show, but I've seen clips and I've seen him on NBC's Football Night in America, and I find him insufferable. I would never have hired him in the first place, let alone for a reported 4 year, $30 million contract. (Link has been changed.) This really looks like a pretext. The first report I read at MediaBistro.com stated that he had signed a four year $30 million contract extension in 2008, but that detail no longer appears in the story. (It is, however, quoted at HotAir.)

Note also that he's suspended without pay. Maybe the tanking ratings just demanded cost cutting. I'd like to see his contract compared to Chris Matthews and the other hosts at MSNBC.

I expect a lawsuit.

Good luck with that.

U.N. calls for higher taxes to combat global warming

A top UN panel on Friday called for increased taxes on carbon emissions and international transport to raise 100 billion dollars a year to combat climate change.

The group led by the prime ministers of Norway and Ethiopia also said there could be a tax on international financial transactions.

Bad time to ask, guys.

Meanwhile, the whole premise of this exercise is under question

What's MSNBC's Problem?

Here's a big part of it.

Olbermann, who signed a four-year, $30 million contract extension in Nov. 2008, . . .

He was supposed to beat O'Reilly? These guys are part of a shrinking universe, but their egos are too big for it.

What happens next? Is it like a red giant star that runs out of the fuel that was keeping it inflated and then collapses into a white dwarf?

I don't know what happens in a shrinking universe, whether everything shrinks but nobody notices or parts of it just keep disappearing as in an episode of Star Trek:TNG. But those of us who aren't part of it surely could tell it's shrinking.

Priceless!

Nick Kristof delivers his best Peggy Noonan impression, Mr. Obama, It's Time For Some Poetry. What a piece of hagiolatry.

If Obama were as great as you think he is, Nick, he wouldn't need your advice, and this economy wouldn't be where it is right now. He would have put off taking advantage of the crisis by passing huge additions to the national debt, and made his first move the extension of the Bush tax cuts. We'd be coming out of the weeds by now, without any spending increases.

I wonder how Kristof forgot about the shovel ready jobs that never existed, the promised millions of new jobs that are now referred to as jobs that he "saved."

Fox's All-star panel tonight got pretty loud arguing over the meaning of the election, before Bret Baier asked them to tone it down. Steve Hayes and Charles Krauthammer vs. Mara Liasson and Juan Williams. Both of the latter are markedly aggressive since NPR fired Juan. That won't satisfy the liberal critics of NPR allowing its employees to appear elsewhere, but it definitely is more fair and balanced.

Harry Reid: "I welcome Republican ideas! I was begging them to help us." Yet he never let them into the rooms where Democrats were mixing the Kool-Aid.

Fear and loathing at MSNBC Chris Matthews is particularly arrogant as he puts words in Michele Bachmann's mouth and she refused to be drawn in. It's a bad cross-examination.

As if this Administration hadn't hurt savers enough,

The Fed will buy $600 billion in debt, lowering interest rates even further.

GM's tax break worth as much as $45 billion Interesting timing.

It's a quarter to one A.M. The Republicans scored BIG in the House. The three major tea-party candidates for the Senate, Sharon Angle, Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller seem to have come short, but that's because winning a Senate seat is a lot tougher to pull off without a professional organization at least equal to what the opponent has. There's a place for Sarah Palin and a place for Karl Rove, and we need them both to be working together. Somebody needs to vet candidates, because you can count on your opponents to throw everything at them

Just heard that NBC has called the House of Representatives for Republicans with a minimum of 60 pick ups. Fox has called the House for Republicans.

So this year the Republicans have taken back the House and made significant gains in the Senate. It's a start. In two years, take back the Senate and make Obama a one-term President.

They told me . . .

* that if I voted for McCain, employers would be pressuring their employees to vote for the employers' favored candidates and even bus them to the polls. And they were right!

* Registered trademark of Instapundit.com

Fox News has called Indiana Governor for Dan Coates. A Republican pickup.
Fox has also called Kentucky Senator for Rand Paul. A Republican hold.

Special Report concluded with a comment by Charles Krauthammer. He described this election as a "comeuppance" for the Democrats due to their arrogance and condescension toward the citizens of this country and toward the Republicans. I wouldn't describe their attitude as condescension; more like dismissal. The grassroots self-organized and came out to tell them to stop and the Democrats wrote them off as ignorant rubes, "astroturf," and somehow illegitimate (violent, racist, funded by foreign money, etc.) I hope it sinks in enough to persuade Congress to extend the so-called Bush tax cuts, but I don't expect it to. More likely, the lame duck Congress will echo Clinton's last minute pardons, with which he gave the nation his middle finger and paid off some unpaid political IOUs. Look out for Cap and Trade. The efforts of the President to rekindle his 2008 magic have fizzled. We've seen that trick before and he's suffering from over exposure as he has flailed and made more false promises. His lap dogs in the media have less bark and even less bite.

The Wall St. Journal tweets:

It has called Kentucky for Rand Paul.

Also:
"Exit polls suggest Democrats lost ground among women, middle-income workers, whites, seniors, independents"

I'm getting tired of people talking about how close conservatives are showing in Democratic states/districts. If they don't win, and by enough to cancel the vote fraud schemes the Dems will carry out. Vote out the local officials who provide cover for dirty politics.

Stopping Sarah Palin--why even talk about it?

Tunku Varadarajan:

Flushed with victory on Wednesday, the Republican establishment may come to acquire delusions of potency: But they would be foolish in the extreme if they start to think that they no longer need Sarah Palin. No one can keep the party’s base pumped up as deftly as she can. No one else has an appeal to the GOP grassroots that is quite as visceral.. . .

The best—the only—way to “manage” Palin would be for the Republican establishment to treat her with respect, and to avoid any hint at all of a patronizing attitude.

Exactly!

I wish Republicans would stop talking about Palin's future. She obviously enjoys taunting the media and Democrats, but that doesn't require an election organization, fund raising, or the kind of stuff you need campaign managers for. If she decides to run, we'll know by sometime next year. She's watching to see who gets out ahead of the pack.

Self-parody at its finest

Here.

On the eve of the elections of 2010

While I welcome a return to divided control of the federal government, I don't really have any illusions that this will put this country back on a sound financial footing.
Obama's transformation will be devilishly hard to undo, and I'm not sure that we can keep up the spirit of the people calling him to account going strong for the years it will take to accomplish it. One thing I'm sure of is that Evil never sleeps, while human beings have a remarkable capacity for self-delusion.

Ross Douthat:

[S]ince Barack Obama took the oath of office, the country’s leftward momentum has reversed itself. In some cases, nearly 20 years of liberal gains have been erased in 20 months. Americans are more likely to self-identify as conservative than at any point since Bill Clinton’s first term. They’ve become more skeptical of government and more anxious about deficits and taxes. They’re more inclined to identify as pro-life and anti-gun control, more doubtful about global warming, more hostile to regulation. And, not surprisingly, they’re more likely to consider voting Republican on Tuesday.

If my party had erased 20 years of gains in 20 months, I'd be pretty upset. I might even sit out an election or two.

If this is true, the Republican Party is due for quite a shakeup. The Republican establishment won't be the establishment much longer if they try to shove Palin out of the running.