Day 7: October 9

26 days to Election Day

The show opens with a discussion of John McCain's new economic plan, based around the mortgaging industry. According to Olbermann, McCain is "cooking the books" on his proposal, by changing the proposal on his website. The campaign claims that the change was due to a typographical error, but Olbermann say that it's a fundamental change in the plan, going from buying mortgages at their current prices to buying them at their listed prices -- which would bring "windfalls" to the lenders and cost taxpayers money. He uses Obama's "(fill-in-the-blank) you can believe in" slogan several times in criticism of McCain, which is sort of a non-objective move. He then gives a quote from McCain, prefaced by him saying that McCain was "lying about his plan, and lying about Obama. Richard Wolffe then joins the show to talk about the issue -- Olbermann asks whether he thinks McCain has the goal of helping lenders over homeowners, and he responds that he thinks he is only doing this to try to power his campaign. He calls the move a "gimmick," in a rare instance of working political bias and journalistic bias into one question/answer combo.

He then greets Margaret Carlson with the question, "Big business benefiting ahead of the American middle class under a Republican would-be president. Who could have ever imagined that?" This is one of the more politically biased statements I've heard on the show so far. She seems to make an effort at being non-partisan, though, at one point mentioning that she didn't want to "repeat [Obama's] talking points," then later saying that in the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mess, "a lot of people have dirty hands in Washington on both sides of the aisle." She's asked to speculate on why McCain's economic attacks on Obama are not working, as well as whether his new plan is a good way to separate himself from the policies of George Bush.

Next Olbermann discusses conservative disapproval with John McCain, framed by George Will's column in which he quoted baseball's Earl Weaver: "Are you going to get any better, or is this it?" Conservative intellectuals are unhappy about the Bill Ayres attacks, as well as about McCain's support of the corporate bailout. Meanwhile, Obama and Joe Biden are essentially calling McCain a coward for being unwilling to bring the attacks to their faces. Howard Fineman comes in to talk; he's asked to speculate on why now is the time McCain has chosen to start focusing on Ayres, and why Obama and Biden would want McCain to attack them in person. This is an example of use of interpretive journalism.

Next is a discussion on an interview Cindy McCain gave in which she says that John McCain hadn't had any post-traumatic stress disorder because he was well-trained, unlike the "the 18-year-olds who were drafted." Olbermann uses some questionable logic here to claim that this is an attack on the troops, by saying that if a soldier is well-trained, he shouldn't be suffering any ill effects of being in a war zone. Jon Soltz, a veteran, then joins the show to express indignation about her comments -- he calls it "absolutely offensive," and says that "it's just set this debate back 30 years." There's definitely some political bias in Olbermann's reasoning here, and in choosing a guest who will back him up.

"Worst Persons in the World" today honors Annie Carney of the New York Post for inventing a "crisis at MSNBC"; Ed Snider, owner of the Philadelphia Flyers, for using a game as a campaign event for Sarah Palin; and George W. Bush, as evidence has come out that the NSA has illegally been spying on the private phone calls of Americans, including military personnel, and including romantic communications. As usual, there is political bias all over this segment.

The show's final segment is an interview with comedian Sarah Silverman, who's the spokesperson for the Great Schlep, a program trying to get young Jewish people to travel to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote for Barack Obama. It's entertaining, but the journalism value is low, and there's a hefty political bias to the segment -- among other things, Silverman calls Sarah Palin "as off-putting and gross as a pageant contestant but without the desire for world peace. "