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October 09, 2009 News Corp

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October 09, 2009 BBC World

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Countdown's Worst Persons segment for Oct. 8, 2009 with winner Michele Bachmann. Runners up, critics of Limbaugh for wanting to buy the Rams and John McCain.

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Another one of both Michelle Bachmann and Bill O’Reilly’s finer moments on Fox Noise. O’Reilly can’t understand why everyone is “after” poor little old Michele Bachmann and says she’s second only behind Sarah Palin in “far left angst” and asks Bachmann why the left is “after her”.

Bachmann: You know, it’s an interesting phenomenon, I think it happened with the competing cable networks who’ve taken an interest in me, and it’s only grown and so now it’s almost like I have personal stalkers, only they have TV shows. So it’s kind of an interesting phenomenon.

So who’s stalking you Michele? Chris Matthews? I would suspect he’ll have something to say about this on his show tomorrow.

While trying to rationalize Bachmann’s arguments on why the left doesn’t like her, Bill-O throws this one out there.

O’Reilly: Do you think, and this is an off the wall question and I’m telling the audience that it’s just something that occurred to me. Both you and Sarah Palin are good looking women. I mean you’re attractive, young… relatively young women, who other women can identify with. You’re a mom, a wife, you had a private sector job. I think that’s it. I think that the success of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann drive the far left crazy because you don’t fit, they don’t like what you believe in, but you, but you can attract others to listen to you. I think that’s what’s going on.

Yeah, that's it Bill. The left hates Palin and Bachmann because you think they're hot. And they're successful. What liberal woman could ever relate to that? And mothers...gasp. What liberal woman could relate to that either? And they had jobs... Oh my goodness what liberal woman could ever relate to another woman that had a job?

And you'd better watch it Michele or you might be getting a phone call from O'Reilly wanting you to talk dirty to him on the phone. (Warning, link definitely not safe for work.)

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From The Rachel Maddow Show Oct. 7, 2009. Yet another shoe drops on Sen. John Ensign. We just had the news on Tom Coburn apparently negotiating bribes for Sen. Ensign, and now this.

MADDOW: We begin with a follow up to Sen. John Ensign’s failed attempt to avoid the media at all costs. You know that Sen. Ensign revealed back in June that he had had an affair with a campaign staffer. A campaign staffer who was married to a man named Doug Hampton. Doug Hampton worked in Sen. Ensign’s senate office. Here was the failed media avoidance indecent.

[…]

“I never talked to Doug Hampton about any of that stuff.” The question was Sen. Ensign did you ever meet with Doug Hampton after you got him a lobbying job. “No, I never met with Doug Hampton about any of that stuff.”

What you just saw was CNN’s Dana Bash and her producer confronting John Ensign outside his office in Washington D.C. yesterday. They’re trying to ask the senator this. What was your involvement with Doug Hampton after you convinced companies to hire him as a lobbyist? It’s an important question because former staffers are required by law to wait a year before lobbying their old bosses.

And the answer that Ensign gave in this interview was zilch, nada, none. He said he had no contact with Doug Hampton on any lobbying matters.

[…]

“I never met with him on any of that lobbying stuff.” Well the New York Times today looked into the veracity of this statement and they found an uh-oh.

Interviews and documents, however, show that Mr. Ensign had lunch in the Senate dining room in March with Mr. Hampton and executives from Allegiant Air to discuss aviation issues. That lunch took place on the same day that the airline executives, in a meeting arranged by Mr. Ensign, spoke with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood about a dispute with a foreign carrier and other issues.

Allegiant Air being one of Mr. Hampton’s clients on whose behalf he lobbied.

BASH: Is there anything else that you... are you considering resigning?

ENSIGN: I am focused on doing my work. I'm going to continue to focus on doing my work.

MADDOW: And so too will everyone else senator-- We will all be focusing on your work. Particularly the work we now think you did with your mistress’ husband/former staffer/illegal lobbyist.

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Dylan Ratigan offered up some meaning for his new catch phrase he's been using this week, describing it as

a system that takes resources from the citizenry and redistributes it to a tiny elite....a handful of weak, uncompetitive and outdated corporations and industries are purchasing control of the American political process in order to stay in business using their cronyism. It is coming at the direct expense of the rest of us, and is a total betrayal of everything that represents America.

The former host of the business channel CNBC spares no punches either in this article at the Huffington Post.

It is an interesting idea, somewhat reminiscent of the idea in economist James K. Galbraith's book The Predator State, which developed on more ideological lines. Galbraith related to Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal:

"The 'predator state' describes what happens when chicken coops are given over to foxes," Mr. Galbraith continued. "When consumer protection, worker protection, environmental protection, and policing against fraud are handed over to lobbyists. And when health care is run for the benefit of private insurance companies, whose business model . . . is to target coverage on the healthy and delay payments to the sick."

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Grayson has recently found a novel approach to fundraising, using a photoshop from a blogger to stick a fork in the eye of his opponents. From The Hill:

This is the the picture Alan Grayson's campaign office e-mailed to supporters recently, soliciting contributions for his re-election campaign.

The picture, of course, is a spoof of the upcoming movie "The Invention of Lying," in which Ricky Gervais becomes the first person to discover dishonesty. Grayson's implication is that he's the first politician to speak the truth.

Grayson has been doubling down on his firebrand liberalism in the last few weeks after controversially accusing Republicans of wanting the sick to "die quickly."

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October 01, 2009 C-SPAN

From The Daily Show: "Larry Wilmore performs magic tricks to show white people how to play the race card."

Wilmore: Did you see that? He's plaing the race card. And he's not the only one.

[..]

Don't back down! You can't play the race card and then just take it back because it sounded stupid!

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Contessa Brewer takes the NRCC to task for their remarks about putting Nancy Pelosi "in her place". I don't think I've ever seen her quite this pissed off. Give 'em hell gal.