Keith Olbermann has found his voice

Keith Olbermann excoriated Washington for the debt ceiling deal it struck over the weekend--and called for a protest movement to rise up against it.

In a Special Comment on his Monday show, Olbermann did not mince words about the deal, which passed the House on Monday and is headed for a vote in the Senate.

"Our government has now given up the concept of right and wrong," he said. "...Those who defend [the deal] have called it a credit to a pragmatic president who wins some sort of political 'points' because, having stood for almost nothing here, he gave away almost nothing for which he stood."

Olbermann said that the deal was founded on what he called four "Great Hypocrisies." The first was the so-called "Super Congress" that will have ultimate authority over further spending cuts. Olbermann said the committee seemed unconstitutional to him. He also blasted Republicans who called for a Balanced Budget Amendment, which he said contradicted their call for the new committee. And he lambasted the deal for containing no tax increases on the wealthy.

Olbermann then pivoted to address the audience.

"Where is the outrage to come from?" he asked rhetorically. "From you! It will do no good to wait for the politicians to suddenly atone for their sins...it will do no good to wait for the media to suddenly remember its origins as the 'free press'...it will do no good to wait for the apolitical public to get a clue."

He said that, without a protest movement, the "tide" that had brought the debt deal "will crush us, because those who created it are organized and unified and hell-bent. And the only response is to be organized and unified and hell-bent in return."


He said the public "must find again the energy and the purpose of the 1960's and early 1970's and we must protest.