'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Thursday, July 14th, 2011
video 'podcast'
screencaps

ShowPlug1: Live on Countdown @Current 8ET: FBI to probe possible Murdoch hacking of 9/11 victims' phones. Murdoch says all going well

ShowPlug2: Threatened w/ jail, he will testify to Parliament. Another editor arrested. Rupert's Bottomless Pit Day 11 w/ @MichaelWolffNYC

ShowPlug3: Did he see it coming? @JohnWDean :Murdoch's $1M donation to Chamber of Commerce + its bud to soften up laws against int'l bribery

ShowPlug4: The Debt Debate as Dems say to Cantor "Get Out!" and the namecalling reaches symphonic proportions; TPM's @BrianBeutler joins us

ShowPlug5: If Voting Rights Act lets DOJ investigate State Voting Suppression Laws, why haven't they done it? @RevJJackson is my guest

ShowPlug6: Fox's New Glenn Beck says something even Beck would vomit over, Martial Law in Quartzsite, AZ, and how do you pronounce...

ShowPlugLast: ..the word "Chutzpah"? Michele Bachmann doesn't know, but my guest Janeane Garofalo does.


Segments:
watch whole playlist

'Investigating the Empire', Michael Wolff
YouTube

'Paying Bribes', John Dean
YouTube

'GOP Debt Turmoil', Brian Beutler
YouTube

Time Marches On!
YouTube

'Voting Rights', Rev. Jesse Jackson
YouTube, Current.com (excerpt)

Worst Persons: Andrea Peyser, Jeff Gilbert, Eric Bolling
Current.com, YouTube

'Wrongs Of The Right', Janeane Garofalo
YouTube, Current.com (excerpt)


Worst Persons:

Here are Countdown's viewers' top three nominees for today's Worst Persons In The World.

The bronze to Andrea Peyser of Murdoch's New York Post, who made up a story today about me calling Congresswoman Michele Bachmann a pig.

"Keith Olbermann suggested on Current TV last week that Bachmann was a pig. "Yeah, should you smell ham burning, she has a fire in her."

No, I called her a ham.

Ham -- a rather typical American euphemism for a corny actor or actress. Publicity addict. Ham.

I've been called a ham myself.

Here's the tape.

Linda Zermeno: she has a fire in her, it's going to take that kind of person blah blah Me: should you smell ham burning, she has a fire in her.

This idea that I called her a pig has spread around the internet by a lot of sloppy pretend media reporters and the assorted right wing paranoids.

My ad lib invoked a famous Hollywood story.

During the filming of the scene in their movie "Jane Eyre" in which the character played by Orson Welles is burned to death, Welles shouted to his co-star Joan Fontaine, quote: "I now know what Joan of Arc endured!"

Fontaine shouted back: "Keep your spirits up. We'll let you know if we smell burning ham!"

I'm sorry the English Language is so difficult for Ms. Peyser. Fortunately, since she works for Rupert Murdoch, she won't have to worry about writing it for a living for very much longer.

The runner-up: Police Chief Jeff Gilbert, who is, right now, in charge of what amounts to an emergency government which has imposed martial law on the town of Quartzsite, Arizona.

This all came to a head when a woman identified as Jennifer Jones was arrested and dragged out of the city council meeting at Quartzsite...and the video posted to You Tube.

The only obvious interpretation is that they arrested her for claiming the council was violating open-meetings laws, while Mayor Ed Foster defends her right to say that.

After this, the Council declared a State of Emergency and ruled Mayor Foster was no longer in charge.

That's when the Police Chief supplanted him, and when the Council voted to give itself the right to meet without public notice and suspend public comments at the meeting

Foster says this is about money.

He was elected last year on a platform to investigate corruption charges, and says that he's discovered that during every municipal pay period since 1991, 8 to 10 paychecks have been issued to unnamed individuals, to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars a year.

Where is Arizona Governor Jan Brewer in all this?

Presumably out wandering the desert looking for illegal headless immigrants threatening to rise from the dead and muss up her wig.

But our winner: Eric Bolling of Fixed News.

This is one of the ten usual suspects shoved out on stage by Roger Ailes in hopes of filling the time slot occupied by the disapparated Glenn Beck.

Bolling has devoted most of the last month to making, then apologizing for, racist remarks about the President, claiming he was quote "chugging 40's" and claiming that entertaining the President of Gabon at the White House meant, quote, "It's not first time he's had a hoodlum in the hizzouse."

But even that stuff was relatively limited in scope.

Last night Bolling managed to offend... everybody.

Two months before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, he either forgot about it, or tried to claim it didn't happen during the Bush Administration.

The topic was the imaginary weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Still trying to understand the feeding frenzy against Rupert Murdoch on all sides of the Atlantic?

It's because of clowns like that one...

Eric "I don't remember any terrorist attacks on American soil between 2000 and 2008" Bolling... Today's Worst Person In The World.