'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
video 'podcast'
screencaps
ShowPlug1: POTUS News Conference; he ducks Debt Limit Unconstitutionality question, says he's right on Libya. W/ @RyanGrim of HuffPo
ShowPlug2: Dems have been exploring Debt Limit Unconstitutionality for awhile; they asked Countdown Contributor @JonathanTurley - I will too
ShowPlug3: Bachmann on reported feud w/Palin gives quote of year: "they want to see two girls come together and have a mud-wrestling fight."
ShowPlug4:@EvanMc_s McMorris-Santoro of TPM gets down and dirty on that story. Jellyfish shut down UK nukes, turtles halt JFK flights...
ShowPlug5: Animals taking back the earth? Who defects to them faster, me or my guest @ChristFinnegan ?
ShowPlugLast: Worsts: Lonesome Rhodes attacked by wine-wielding liberal Soros agents at NYC park. OR wine is accidentally spilled on Mrs. LR
Segments:
'Obama Q&A', Ryan Grim
YouTube, Current.com (excerpt)
'Going For Broke'/'What Debt Ceiling?', Jonathan Turley
YouTube, Current.com (excerpt)
Time Marches On!
YouTube
'Muddying The Waters', Evan McMorris-Santoro
YouTube
Worst Persons: Bristol Palin, Glenn Beck, Don Blankenship of Massey Energy & Joe Main of MSHA
Current.com, YouTube
'Animals Strike Back', Christian Finnegan
YouTube
Worst Persons:
Here are Countdown's top three nominees for today's Worst Persons In The World.
The bronze to Bristol Palin, authoress, desperately trying to sell her new book "Not Afraid Of Life" by telling interviewers on ABC and Fox that she knows whether or not her mother is going to run for President -- and so does her mother. They just won't tell anybody. She could announce she is going to mud-wrestle Michele Bachmann and it wouldn't help her daughter's book sales. Publishing sources tell us that in its first week, "Not Afraid Of Life" sold exactly...1,479 copies. In its first week of publication -- almost always a book's high watermark -- it is not even in the list of the top 100 hardcovers. It was exactly one copy ahead of "Professional Idiot" by Steve-O from Jackass. And then there's the audio version of "Not Afraid To Live." In its first week, total copies sold? Eighteen. One-eight. Bristol Palin may not be afraid to live, but viewers evidently are afraid to buy it.
Runner-up: Lonesome Rhodes Beck. Apparently he and his family were threatened by a wilding crowd at an event at New York City's Bryant Park on Monday night. Orrr... Somebody accidentally spilled a glass of wine on his wife. In Beck's version, during a public screening of the movie "The 39 Steps" in New York's Bryant Park, the crowd screamed mean things at him and took his picture and then -- while quote: " being used by a global corporation like General Electric or special interests like the labor unions or politicians, the Democratic Party, or George Soros"... They launched their horrible attack on his family... Using Wine of Mass Destruction! Oh, the humanity. Wine of Mass Destruction! A second version of the event has now been offered by a witness to what Beck called the equivalent of a lynching of he and his wife Tanya. This was offered to a website by the woman sitting next to the woman who spilled the wine on Mrs.
Lonesome Rhodes: "I was on the blanket directly behind Mr. Beck, and while we did find it amusing that wine was spilled on Tanya & co, I can tell you that it was 100% accidental. My friend was drinking her wine and it tipped over, as wine glasses are wont to do. We immediately helped Tanya & co clean up the "mess" and offered them our napkins, and apologies were made. There was no hostility or animosity in the exchange, and I find it hard to believe that a half-filled glass of wine would be capable of "soaking" anyone, even waif-thin Tanya. Moreover, why would we waste the wine?"
Either way, I certainly don't endorse harassing celebrities in public. But I can tell you that if this is the worst Glenn Beck's ever encountered, he's lucky. I get crap like this all the time. If you don't like it, you get out of the business. Wine-wielding thugs. And by the way -- where was the body-guard Beck keeps with him at all times?
But our winners are Don Blankenship, the C-E-O of Massey Energy, and Joe Main, head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. Blankenship's company was the operator of the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, when it exploded last year, killing 29 people. The fiancee of one of the dead miners has revealed that federal investigators showed them proof that Massey Energy kept a second, fake set of safety records, to deceive federal mine safety inspectors. One copy of a shift report showed that operations had been halted because ventilation had failed and methane gas might explode; a second copy of the same shift reported showed no shut down, no ventilation problems, and no methane. And the Mine Safety Administration...fell for it. Never investigated. 29 dead. People should go to jail for that.
And those people are: Massey CEO Don Blankenship... And MSHA chief Joe Main. Today's Worst Persons In The World.