Lawrence O'Donnell: SECRETS

Ever since Lawrence O'Donnell's complete meltdown on MSNBC's Scarborough Country, when he so rudely shouted down John O'Neill, I've considered him to be a loon.

I used to think that O'Donnell was somewhat reasonable for a lib, but I haven't thought that since the Scarborough Country spectacle. I don't think O'Donnell regained his equilibrium after that. He may have always been unbalanced; but it was that October 22, 2004, show that revealed with such clarity what an unhinged, out of control nutjob he is.

The man flipped out in what should have been a career ending appearance.

Maybe it would have been the end for O'Donnell if he had thrown his hissy fit on a channel that people actually watch.

I think almost anything can happen on MSNBC and go unnoticed.

Luckily, the transcript of O'Donnell's memorable performance is preserved for posterity.

If you're not familiar with his crash and burn, read it.

Even a commercial break didn't help O'Donnell to compose himself when he went nuts over John O'Neill, author of Unfit for Command.

The Complete Infamous "Creepy Liar" Transcript



After a lengthy absence, O'Donnell has rejoined The McLaughlin Group, just in time for him to go off the deep end again. He did manage to maintain his composure, relatively speaking. He didn't have a total breakdown as in 2004 on Scarborough Country.

This weekend, the program dwelled on the Mark Foley scandal. (Surprise!)

Given that early last week Tony Blankley's editorial in The Washington Times called for Dennis Hastert to resign, the panelists were pretty much in agreement.

Eleanor Clift and O'Donnell both predicted that the scandal would mean the end of the Republican Party's control of Congress.

It's difficult to determine which lib on the show is the most goofy. Both Clift and O'Donnell are worthy contenders to be deemed the supreme extreme Leftist loon.

Of all the panelists on this weekend's McLaughlin Group, O'Donnell was strikingly weird, even for him.

He warned that not only would the proverbial other shoe soon drop in the scandal, but there would be a massive dump. There is much more out there to be exposed, reaching far beyond Foley.

O'Donnell continued his thinly-veiled gay-bashing and forewarned the outing of gay Republicans.

He also asserted that if Hastert did resign, then the Republicans would be in a bind. O'Donnell claimed that there is absolutely no one in the Republican Party "clean enough" to assume a leadership role.

That, of course, is ridiculous. When challenged that by his standards there wouldn't be a Democrat "clean enough" to lead in the House either, he dismissed the charge and reiterated that Mark Foley was only the first in a long list of soon to be outed and disgraced congressmen.

It was creepy. He talked about the GOP and its dirty gay secrets.

O'Donnell has been hinting for days about more names, about more closeted Republicans.

Yesterday, O'Donnell wrote a piece about Scott Palmer.

Who is Scott Palmer?

O'Donnell answers that with insinuations and innuendoes.

He writes:

He is Speaker Hastert's chief of staff, which makes him the key player in the what-did-Hastert-know-and-when-did-he-know-it drama. Scott Palmer has issued a statement flatly denying that Kirk Fordham, Mark Foley's former chief of staff, warned him that Foley was crossing the line with pages long before Foley's inappropriate email surfaced. Palmer's denial of Fordham's headline-grabbing claim is the thread Hastert's Speakership is now hanging by.

...He avoided every question with Palmer's name in it. Hastert obviously does not want to talk about Scott Palmer.

O'Donnell makes quite a leap, implying that something untoward is going on between Hastert and Palmer.

If Fordham did warn Palmer about Foley a long time ago, what are the odds that Palmer did not tell Hastert? As close to zero as you can get. Many chiefs of staff are close, very close, to their bosses on Capitol Hill. But none are closer than Scott Palmer is to Denny Hastert. They don't just work together all day, they live together.

O'Donnell doesn't hestitate to suggest that Palmer and Hastert's relationship is... let's say very close.

There are plenty of odd couple Congressmen who have roomed together on Capitol Hill, but I have never heard of a chief of staff who rooms with his boss. It is beyond unusual. But it must have its advantages. Anything they forget to tell each other at the office, they have until bedtime to catch up on. And then there's breakfast for anything they forgot to tell each other before falling asleep. And then there's all day at the office. Hastert and Palmer are together more than any other co-workers in the Congress.

What exactly is O'Donnell trying to say about this "odd couple," these supposedly inseparable men?

For now, Hastert is holding on to the Speaker's office because the Republicans don't have anyone in the leadership who is squeaky clean enough to take the job. Every one of them is tainted by the Foley scandal or the Abramoff scandal or the DeLay scandal or, like Henry Hyde, has some ancient sexual indiscretion in his background. But if the press cracks Scott Palmer's denial of Kirk Fordham's bombshell, then Denny Hastert is going to have to pass the gavel to some freshman we've never heard of.

Here O'Donnell supplies the same analysis that he offered on The McLaughlin Group.

NO REPUBLICAN is "squeaky clean enough" to become speaker.

He makes the same outlandish claim that "every one of them is tainted" by scandal or some skeleton lurking in the closet.

That's ludicrous.

He's nuts.

Of course, there isn't a human being alive who is perfect; but there's no way that out of the hundreds of Republicans in Congress, not one is fit to lead. It's an idiotic assertion.

The dirty not so secret secret being circulated and promoted by lib attack dogs like O'Donnell is "the list."

David Corn wrote about it last week.

On CBS News on Tuesday, correspondent Gloria Borger reported that there's anger among House Republicans at what an unidentified House GOPer called a "network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice." The implication is that these gay Republicans somehow helped page-pursuing Mark Foley before his ugly (and possibly illegal) conduct was exposed. The List--drawn up by gay politicos--is a partial accounting of who on Capitol Hill might be in that network.

I have a copy. I'm not going to publish it. For one, I don't know for a fact that the men on the list are gay. And generally I don't fancy outing people--though I have not objected when others have outed gay Republicans, who, after all, work for a party that tries to limit the rights of gays and lesbians and that welcomes the support of those who demonize same-sexers.

What's interesting about The List--which includes nine chiefs of staffs, two press secretaries, and two directors of communications--is that (if it's acucurate) it shows that some of the religious right's favorite representatives and senators have gay staffers helping them advance their political careers and agendas. These include Representative Katherine Harris and Henry Hyde and Senators Bill Frist, George Allen, Mitch McConnell and Rick Santorum.

I wonder how the gay and lesbian communities feel about the existence of this list. I hope they are repulsed by it. The personal lives of aides and staffers should not be used as fodder in an effort to damage Republicans.

Moreover, the damaging nature of the list is based on the premise that Republicans are anti-gay. What makes the Left think that the majority of supporters of the Republican Party are intolerant of gay individuals?

Furthermore, what about privacy?

Some people actually believe that one's sexual preferences are a personal matter. Some people don't see the need to publicly broadcast details of their private behavior in intimate relationships.

Isn't that what we were told during Bill Clinton's serial dalliances?

I find it astounding that so many on the Left believe that the Republican base will jump ship upon discovering that some GOP staffers are gay.

Here's a newsflash: Those who make up the Republican base are aware that there are gay people. Believe it or not, they have family and friends who are gay! (GASP!)

I don't know what O'Donnell and these libs are thinking.

The Republican voters didn't reject Dick Cheney because his daughter is gay, something that John Kerry and John Edwards would strain to bring up every chance they would get.

Kerry and Edwards intented to exploit Cheney's daughter to turn Republican supporters against the party. This list is meant to do precisely the same thing.

The case of Mark Foley is different. He was acting inappropriately with pages, some underage. That's an entirely different matter than a list of gay GOP staffers.

It disgusts me that Dems plan to out people. What a despicable invasion of privacy!

In effect, these Dems are presuming that Republican voters think being gay is a scandal.

What they are doing is absolutely reprehensible.


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Read O'Donnell's prediction:

The Republican base--the Evangelical get-out-the-vote troops--are going to be devastated when they discover how many closeted gay Republicans were involved in policing Mark Foley in the House of Representatives. Republican House members know this. That's why momentum is building for a very quick House cleaning and a new Speaker by next week.

WRONG!

The New York Times reports:

As word of Representative Mark Foley’s sexually explicit e-mail messages to former pages spread last week, Republican strategists worried — and Democrats hoped — that the sordid nature of the scandal would discourage conservative Christians from going to the polls.

But in dozens of interviews here in southeastern Virginia, a conservative Christian stronghold that is a battleground in races for the House and Senate, many said the episode only reinforced their reasons to vote for their two Republican incumbents in neck-and-neck re-election fights, Representative Thelma Drake and Senator George Allen.

...Most of the evangelical Christians interviewed said that so far they saw Mr. Foley’s behavior as a matter of personal morality, not institutional dysfunction.

All said the question of broader responsibility had quickly devolved into a storm of partisan charges and countercharges. And all insisted the episode would have little impact on their intentions to vote.

The best laid plans of Dems...