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RachelWatch: Offended Sensibilities

Today: Congressman Alan Grayson angers the Republicans, Senator David Vitter gets called on his hypocrisy, and high fructose corn syrup is so very good for you.

Pot, Meet Kettle

Rachel started off with Congressman Alan Grayson’s (D — Florida) living illustration of why it might have been a good idea for the Republicans to have policed their own rhetoric over the past few months.

This is yet another occasion on which Ms. Maddow has proved herself to be a better human being than I am. I thoroughly enjoyed Grayson’s remarks when I heard them. I’m impressed at Rachel’s better commitment to courtesy, responsibility, and not throwing around the word ‘holocaust’ lightly.

And to be fair, Republicans have never said that their constituents should try not to get sick.

They’ve said their constituents should try to get government jobs to get on that supercool health plan, and they’ve said that their constituents should get charity from their neighbors — some of whom can presumably handle and insert hospital feeding tubes — but they’ve never specifically said not to get sick.

The Truth about the Lies about ACORN

Rachel continued her TRMS Investigates series with a closer look at lobbyist for hire Rick Berman, a man who is involved in such depths of sleazebaggery that he may actually be joke proof. While I was watching this segment, I thought of a ridiculously over-the-top awful “cause” that I could suggest Berman might want to get involved in.

Only it turned out he already was involved in it, for real.

In a way, I have to admire the scope of Berman’s interests. He’s like a one-man clearinghouse for creepy.

Someone pinch me and tell me I didn’t dream the part where she said Berman is actually going on the show next week.

I do think that’s a better strategy than trying to duck Rachel and letting her hammer at him until the end of time, but still. Beelzebub’s cupbearer Rick Berman really has some stones. Or some hubris.

Such an idealist going up against such a merchant of apparently anything is going to be like Godzilla versus Mothra.

Metaphorically, I am camped out on the sidewalk in front of the ticket booth.

The Vitter Truth

You know what you should do if you’re involved in a hooker scandal and then a totally different hooker-related scandal comes up? Let. It. Go.

Score political points with anything else, but let the stuff that matches your scandal go, or you are just asking to get whacked in the forehead with the karmic boomerang.

Rachel welcomed Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), to talk about why Senator David Vitter (R — Louisiana) should have poured himself a tall, frosty glass of Zip It.

That website Sloan mentioned, by the way, was bermanexposed.org. I think Mothra might be in trouble.

After a casual perusal of the site, I do have one small plea for Mr. Berman: Buy a freaking thesaurus. There are other words in the world besides “scam.”

Disaster in the Pacific

A typhoon devastated Southeast Asia and two major earthquakes hit the South Pacific in two days: Wednesday there was a quake with a magnitude of 7.6 off coast of Indonesia, and Tuesday an 8.0 earthquake hit near Samoa, causing a devastating Tsunami.

If you’d like to donate to the relief efforts, you can do so through the Red Cross.

(As always, the TRMS staff and their amazing webmaster Will linked to the donation site through their own site. Props to them for being so cool and so diligent about the links.)

Life During Wartime

Rachel reported that General Ray Odierno says 4,000 troops may be leaving Iraq by end of October. No word yet on whether the troops will be shifted to Afghanistan or whether the Neocons have to step up their efforts to pick a new fight with someone else.

With Democrats Like These…

Rachel brought us the maddening news that the Senate Finance Committee is still considering 500 amendments to the health care reform bill. I am convinced that they walk into that room as relatively normal, competent human beings (OK, maybe not Senator Grassley), so what the hell happens?

Yes, the Orrin Hatch Women Should Plan To Need Abortions in Advance amendment and the Foreigners Are Scary And We Resolve Not To Treat So Much As a Hangnail Even Though We Already Said We Wouldn’t Like Seventeen Times amendment got defeated, but then everybody went completely off their nuts and approved a bunch of funding for abstinence-only education, which we all know doesn’t work.

Abstinence-only education works so badly that infertile couples are now prescribed abstinence-only education as a more reliable way of producing pregnancies than in vitro fertilization.

Abstinence-only education works so badly that gay and lesbian couples have been known to produce spontaneous pregnancies — without insemination or surrogates — just from reading a few pamphlets.

If it weren’t for the accompanying massive spread of STDs, abstinence only education would be answer to the World Wildlife Fund’s prayers. They’d clean up the endangered species list in a matter of months. We’d all be bitching about what a pain those massive flocks of bald eagles are.

Anyway, we all know it doesn’t work, and we’re spending tens of millions of dollars on it because when the Senators get into that committee room they lose all sense of reason and perspective.

What happens in there? Do they not let them have healthy snacks? Is it one of those things where they just guzzle coffee and eat snickerdoodles until they’re all so wired that they just start voting for anything with a cool name?

Also, Conservadem Senator Ben Nelson (Nebraska) would like to make sure that no health care reform passes at all, or at least not without it being a huge pain in the butt. Now even a supermajority of 60 is not enough. He wants 65 so he can feel really good about the bill.

OK, 65 votes and a flock of heavenly doves to descend from the ceiling and bless the bill. Then he’d feel all right about it.

Well, maybe 65 votes, a flock of heavenly doves, a total eclipse of the sun, Kanye West dropping by to assure him that this is really is the best bill of all time, and some extra cinnamon for the snickerdoodles. Then he’d really feel secure. Is that so much to ask?

Going Rogue with a Bonus Clip

Kent had a report on Sarah Palin’s ghost writer. It’s irrelevant and gratuitous and you know you want it.

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