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Keith and Eugene Robinson had the same reaction I did to watching members of Congress out there calling for something close to the overthrow of our government. I agree completely with Eugene Robinson—it was frankly appalling.

OLBERMANN: Good evening from New York.

An elected Republican official today is leading a protest on the west steps of the Capitol that compared health care reform to Nazi death camps and encouraged mindless harassment of and possibly violence against the government. Not tea baggers anymore, not demagogic commentators, an actual congresswoman inciting a hateful rebellion against the rule of law and order. Her name is Michele Bachmann.

Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN: As if that were not bad enough, Ms. Bachmann today joined by the House minority leader as well as countless other GOP representatives. This orgy of veiled threat and not so veiled racism of white power minority rule now fully the province of the Republican Party. Welcome to the coup!

Congressman Bachmann staging what she tried to claim was a spontaneous meet-up of opponents to health care reform, in 25 buses paid for by the AstroTurf group Americans for Prosperity, could be considered spontaneous. An estimated 4,000 people today answering Ms. Bachmann‘s call, bringing with them on those buses, not just their misunderstanding of health care reform but also their hatred of President Obama, as well as pure hatred, period.

Lee Fang of ThinkProgress.org taking these photographs of a sign that reads “National Socialist Health Care, Dachau, Germany, 1945,” superimposed over the horrific images of the corpses from Dachau. Other signs are slightly less shameful but many in no way related to health care.

Congresswoman Bachmann urging these people to rebel.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BACHMANN: It was Thomas Jefferson who said—a revolution every now and then is a good thing. What do you think?

(CHEERING)

BACHMANN: You feel so good right now, and we, the members of Congress that are gathered on these steps for this press conference, are so honored that you are here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Press conference? The geniuses at the Republican study committee trying to rebrand today‘s event not as a protest, nor a rally, but as a press conference. Urging House staffers in an e-mail last night to please make sure your boss does not turn this event a rally.

Does any of this sound like press conference to you?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAUL BROUN, GEORGIA: Who will kill this bill? You will! You will! And we must. The Constitution of the United States starts with three very powerful words: “We, the people.” And we the people are speaking. Nancy Pelosi, listen.

Fellow patriots, go tell your congressman you‘re not going to eat this rotten stinking fish that is Pelosi health care! We are going to put a stop sign in front of her steamroller of socialism. Go to it, Patriots!

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Keith names JAG Tom Kenniff the winner of his Worst Person in the World segment. Runners up Allen West and Brian Kilmeade, Gretchen Carlson and Peter Johnson of Fox News.

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Keith talks to Rep. Alan Grayson about whether he thinks the Democrats will get a bill through the House this week and whether we'll be able to call what's passed reform. He also asked him what he thought would be in John Boehner and the Republicans' yet to be written health care plan they're supposed to be releasing this week.

Olbermann: You have already outlined on the floor of the House one of or the basic Republican tenets of a health insurance plan. When Mr. Boehner says he's going to have an alternative bill ready, first off they've been saying that all year and there's been nothing yet, so far. But is there actually one in the works and have your heard anything of what's been in it?

Grayson: I think what's in it is more of the same. They're going to try to do whatever they can to placate the insurance companies. The Republican national party is now a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America and that's especially true of the insurance companies. They'll do whatever the insurance companies want.

Sadly the same thing can be said about a few too many of the Democrats with positions on the Senate Finance Committee. If you want to help out one of the good guys out there and donate to Rep. Grayson't Act Blue money bomb, here's the link.

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How many times did Tucker have this coming when he worked for MSNBC but he never made the Worst Persons list since he was at the same network? Keith lets loose on him in this segment.

OLBERMANN: The Beck theory that the government is using On Star to track your whereabouts. This close to claiming they implanted microchips in his head.

That‘s next, but first time for COUNTDOWN‘s number two story, tonight‘s worst persons in the world.

The bronze to Boss Limbaugh. I‘ll just read this: “Obama is out there saying that Fox News is talk radio. I‘m living rent-free in this guy‘s head. Fox News is talk radio. If that‘s true, MSNBC is pornography. And Obama likes MSNBC. CNN is child porn.”

Wow, his imagery gets more and more disturbing every day.

The runner-up, Tucker Carlson, world sophistry champion. “The two most senior members of the White House staff attempt to bully a news outlet into silence and hardly anyone in the press says a word. Meanwhile, the same White House that had just finished lecturing working journalists on the superiority of straight news coverage hosted a secret, off the record briefing for Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. The two, along with several other liberal commentators, spent more than two hours with Obama. Why is the press corps giving the White House a pass for behavior it never would have tolerated from other administrations? Conservatives believe it‘s simple bias.”

I‘m a little tired of the sanctimonious, amnesic crap from people like Tucker Carlson. The previous White House planted questions in its own news conference, secretly paid conservative columnists, staged massage briefing sessions for radio hosts, sent out a list of questions they hoped I would use to discredit Joe Wilson, publicly attacked NBC, publicly attacked MSNBC, by the admission of the press secretary, just the other day, cut MSNBC out of access to administration officials, and its party leadership tried to blackmail NBC News into removing me from election coverage by threatening to boycott a presidential debate.

This White House finally called out a group of amoral political operatives posing as journalists. That was it. They didn‘t deny them credentials. They didn‘t try to silence them. They didn‘t take them off the air. They didn‘t try to take them off the air. They called them what they are, the media propaganda wing of the Republican party.

And I‘m a little tired of the false equivalency here. You go ask this White House if they‘re happy that I‘m insisting on the public option when they‘re not. You go ask this White House if they‘re happy that I‘m pushing for torture prosecutions and they‘re trying to soft pedal them.

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The wingnuts were out in force yesterday denouncing that Washington Post/ABC News poll showing strong public support for the public option.

But as Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, there was a lot more data in the poll that should really have them clutching their pearls and fainting:

OLBERMANN: When anti-government protesters targeted President Obama and other Democratic leaders on April 15, the party took a hit. When town halls raged and the Tea Bag crowd hit Washington, the party staggered further. Now, the Tea Bag guys are on the move again. But in our third story tonight, signs that the party getting hurt by the anti-government Tea Bag people is the Republican party.

This week's "Washington Post"/ABC poll found 51 percent of Americans say that in next year's Congressional vote, faced with the generic Democrat versus the generic Republican, they'll vote for the Democrat; 39 percent will vote for the Republican. Only 19 percent have at least a good amount of confidence in Congressional Republicans to make the right decisions, far lower than Democrats or the president, for that matter.

And the number of Americans calling themselves Republicans has fallen to 20 percent -- 20, the lowest since 1983. A closer look shows that number has fallen from 25 percent just since mid-August. That's not a five percent loss for Republicans. Dropping from 25 percent to 20 percent is a loss of a fifth. Meaning since the height of town hall, Palin, Beck, death panel palooza, one out of five Republicans has stopped being Republican.

Republicans stopped at 25 percent back in March too, nine days after Tea Bag nations. Republicans were down to 21 percent. Naturally, Republicans are trying again. That's right, Tea Party Express II launches this weekend, coming to 38 cities, according to its press release, 37 on their website. Oh, well.

Previous Tea Parties so successful, they now have to hold them in such venues as Wichita's Lawrence Piedmont Stadium (ph) parking lot, Fallon (ph) Nevada's old Walmart's parking lot, a high school auditorium in Tri-Cities in Washington, Bozeman, Montana's Heritage Christian School gymnasium, and in Amarillo, Texas, John Stiff Memorial Park, picnic area number four. Seriously, picnic area number four. Don't interrupt the outing in area number three, please.

A dozen cities have no venue listed at all. According to the tour's Facebook page, "192 people are planning to attend these rallies."

In its own press release, a spokesman says about its new video, the web video promoting the tour, quote, "the tone of the ad is upbeat and positive." The name of the upbeat, positive ad is, "Countdown to Judgment Day."

And here's what upbeat and positive sounds like to these people.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you had enough of the out-of-control spending, bailouts, higher taxes, a spiraling national debt and big-government liberalism, then we invite you to join the Tea Party Express rally nearest you. We'll send a message to the politicians. Come election day, we're going to hand you a pink slip and take our country back.

Of course, it was simpler for Sean Hannity to just be in denial, since the poll made a liar out of him the day before when he tried to claim all the polls showed the public hated the public option. So he went on his show last night and said this:

Hannity: The business of this White House is division. And the White House's war against Fox News Channel is the latest evidence that it will throw its principles by the wayside to ensure that everybody falls in line with their agenda. And with the exception of Fox News, the other networks, they're receiving gold stars on their White House report cards.

And the latest case in point is the Washington Post/ABC News poll that shows that 57 percent of Americans support a government health-care takeover, and only 40 percent oppose it.

Now, a closer look at that poll explains why. Now, get this: They polled 13 percent more Democrats than Republicans! That explains a few things!

Of course, if Sean Hannity worked for a real news organization, he would likely know -- or have somebody around to explain to him before committing idiocies like this -- that polls use what they call "sampling" to get accurate results. In this case, they sampled more Democrats than Republicans for a very simple reason: The latest party-identification polling shows a 13-percent difference between Americans who call themselves Democrats and those who (shudderingly) admit to being Republican.

But then, Hannity doesn't work for a real news organization. So of course this kind of propagandistic crap is what we get polluting our teevees. Which, anymore, is the only thing the shrinking ranks of the rabid right have going for them still.

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Friend of the site Richard Lewis on Countdown weighs in on Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck and Joe Lieberman and his The Misery Loves Company Stand-up Tour benefit for Lenny's House.

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Countdown's Worst Persons segment with winner Glenn Beck. Runners up Rep. Gregg Harper and Rush Limbaugh. Classy bunch here. Especially Limbaugh.

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Continuing his Anita Dunn jihad -- in fact, he devoted nearly his entire hour yesterday to attacking Dunn speciously -- Glenn Beck featured a segment with an anonymous "Concerned Parent" who actually attended the high-school commencement ceremony at which Dunn delivered her now-notorious "Mao" remarks. To protect his identity from the evil White House thugs who no doubt would brutalize the poor fellow, they altered his voice and showed him only in silhouette.

But John Aravosis noted a particular family resemblance between this silhouette and a familiar profile at Fox News"

Well, today America's favorite sociopath had a super duper double secret "anonymous" parent on to complain about a graduation speech that Ms. Dunn gave a while back. The thing is, when you look at the alleged parent, who was speaking from FOX's Washington, DC bureau, he sure looks an awful lot like FOX's own Chris Wallace. Check out the screen capture above from the TV. I posted a normal photo of Wallace to the left, and one in which I scrunched his head to the right (since the anonymous parent looks like they scrunched the video of his head, to further disguise him). Is it just me, or are those trademark ears and helmet-head hair just a little too similar to Chris Wallace's?

That's always fun speculation. But then Richard Wolffe of Newsweek went on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night and pointed out that there was more than just a resemblance:

Wolffe: Look at how this video has just popped up about Anita Dunn and her graduation ceremony of her own son. You know, this video, which was not available for public record, happened to pop up on the Glenn Beck show. And it's the same school where Chris Wallace spoke the year before because his kids also went there.

Was that coincidence, or is Fox determined to take this to another level? That's not about news, it's about personal attacks. Look, they may enjoy it for all sorts of commercial reasons. But it goes way beyond the commercial aspect here. There is an unholy jihad going on.

Someone needs to ask Chris Wallace if he is Beck's "Concerned Parent." Just, you know, to clear things up.

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Countdown's Worst Persons for Oct. 19, 2009 with winner Tom Donahue of the Chamber of Congress. Runners up Bill O'Reilly and Jack Kingston.

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Countdown's Worst Persons for Oct. 14, 2009 with winner Glenn Beck. Runners up Dallin H. Oaks and Bill O'Reilly and Brit Hume.

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Countdown's Worst Persons for Oct. 13, 2009 with winner the RNC. Runners up Glenn Beck and Bill-O, and Michelle Malkin.

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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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Richard Wolffe returned to Countdown this week, absent from MSNBC airwaves for only a month after Glenn Greenwald pointed out that his full time employer was no longer Newsweek, but a lobbying firm:

Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program -- or serving as an almost daily "political analyst" -- is exactly tantamount to MSNBC's just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist. Wolffe's role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover. Yet MSNBC is putting him on as a guest-host and "political analyst" on one of its prime-time political shows. What makes that even more appalling is that, as Ana Marie Cox first noted, neither MSNBC nor Wolffe even disclose any of this.

This is a conflict so severe that it's incurable by disclosure: who wouldn't realize that you can't present paid corporate hacks as objective political commentators? But the fact that they don't even bother to disclose that just serves to illustrate how non-existent is the line between corporate interests and "news reporting" in the United States. Then again, Wolffe himself -- when it was previously revealed that he was exploiting his position as a Newsweek reporter covering the Obama campaign to leverage access to Obama in order to write a glowing book about him -- said this:

And [Wolffe] suggested he’s not that different from other reporters in an era in which the business and the profession of journalism have gotten closer and closer.

"The idea that journalists are somehow not engaged in corporate activities is not really in touch with what's going on. Every conversation with journalists is about business models and advertisers," he said, recalling that, on the day after the 2008 election, Newsweek sent him to Detroit to deliver a speech to advertisers.

"You tell me where the line is between business and journalism," he said.

And yet, he's back...with nary a word about his absence, still as an MSNBC political analyst.

Don't get me wrong, I like Richard Wolffe in general, and appreciated his appearances on Countdown in the past, but to name him as a "Senior Strategist at Public Strategies" is truly the sparest way to describe him as a lobbyist and really blurs the lines between journalism and promotion/propaganda beyond what should be acceptable. How can we ever know if Wolffe's analysis is truly what he believes or if it's what he's been paid to promote by a client?

And frankly, I'm tired of the insular nature of these broadcasts, when the same predictable people show up day after day after day. To be fair to Keith, Olbermann is not the only news anchor with a retinue of guests they stick with over and over. They all do it. Even Rachel Maddow brings on "Uncle Pat" Buchanan, whose views are generally factually wrong or so far outside the mainstream, you can't but wonder why he's still on television. Wolffe isn't like that. But as I've documented before on media balance and biases, so much critical information is withheld from we viewers already that we generally don't get a fair view of the issues of the day, I really do have to ask if there are no other voices that Olbermann can turn to that he has to bring back a DC lobbyist?

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Countdown's Worst Persons segment for Oct. 5, 2009 with winner Rep. Paul Broun. Runners up George Will and Rush Limbaugh.

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As Keith notes, the Senators who hate the idea of a public option for health insurance sure didn't have any problem voting for a public option to protect the profits of insurance companies against too many flood claims.

OLBERMANN: The Republicans who oppose health care reform and the conservative Democrats who oppose a public option have deeply principled, philosophical objections to the concept of government insurance—except when insurance companies benefit from it, as you‘ll see in our fourth story tonight.

The big arguments against the public option have been these: that the government is incapable of running an insurance plan, that the free-market provides consumers with better choices, that socialized insurance will have unfair advantages. But as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David K. Johnston recently reported, these arguments do not stop some of the big opponents of socialized insurance for voting for socialized insurance when that insurance is not for the wellbeing of people but of property and insurance companies.

After the president gave his national speech for health care reform, Louisiana Congressman Charles Boustany gave the Republican Party rebuttal targeting the public option, which Boustany calls “government-run health care.”

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