Keith Olbermann and many others owe Rick an apology...

I hate even giving Keith Olbermann more hits on his web site, but last week he named Rick the worst person in the world... AGAIN....

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His reasoning for awarding Rick the world person in the world...

Allegedly Rick was pushing to take stimulus money for the mansion. 

THE TRUTH... it turns out that the federal stimulus dollars are not going to any of Rick's projects (link). Excerpts follows...

Remember the stimulus money that was going to fund Gov. Rick Perry's pet programs in the budget agreed on by House-Senate negotiators -- despite Perry's criticism of what he describes as big-spending Washington?

Well, not any more.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said budget writers exchanged state general revenue money for the stimulus funds that were going to help pay for Governor's Mansion repairs and to boost the Texas Enterprise Fund, Emerging Technology Fund and a film in

centive fund.

"We swapped it," Ogden said after budget negotiators formally signed off on a $182.3 billion, two-year state budget this morning.

Why?

"Because the governor asked us to," Ogden said. "All of it got swapped out. ... so don't go out and write a ****** story."

My contacts around Austin tell me that this was never something Rick pushed for. It was always something that some of Rick's political enemies pushed to make him look bad. Rick's legislative team fought it the whole way.

This is a big break down by Rick's communications people. This story was totally false all along, but they didn't say a peep about it. The budget process is an ongoing thing, yet the damage done from this untrue story will be permanent. How many blogs will retract their stories about Rick's alleged hypocrisy? What are the odds that Keith Olbermann will apologize for getting the story wrong? How many of the people tweeting and retweeting this story snottily will feel compelled to take it back?

Zero is the answer to all of those questions. Zero. The damage is done. He will be known as the guy who called for secession and yet took federal money for his mansion.

I think that Rick's people sometimes incorrectly believe that the truth will win out in the end or that the media can't report what is just blatantly false, and because of that they get caught sleeping on stories like this. The secession thing is the same way. Rick never even uttered the word "secede" and if you actually go back and see what he said, he said we should not dissolve our "great" union. Yet Rick's people remained silent on it as weeks went by with Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann and Jay Leno solidifying a false myth in peoples' minds. What's the deal?

On this mansion thing, they should be shouting it from the rooftops and demanding retractions from news stations and newspapers. Why aren't they? It makes no sense, other than some sort of inside politics legislative maneuvering.

By not getting out early on these stories, Rick's team gives Keith Olbermann ammo to shoot darts at Rick. Those darts end up sticking, and even Republicans start repeating the mistruths.

Rick, TeamRick, you guys are better than this. Get it together. Have a firefighting team that does something about these stories before they become full fledged forest fires. I can't take much more of smug Keith Olbermann. Just look at him. I hate that guy, but you are letting him and lots of blogs have the upper hand by staying silent on these issues, however tiny and trivial you might think they are.