Kentucky's Turn To Bring The Crazy, Sharron Angle Sees Asians, And More On Eddie Bernice Johnson

Hello people. Here we are in a new week, once again knee deep in the crazy. The truly sad part? It will never end. Yes, the 2010 election will actually occur. But the very next morning? Commence the 2012 campaigning! Le sigh. To the bullet points!

• We're kicking things off with the Kentucky senate race, which just got a wee bit snippy. You see, Democrat Jack Conway has put out an ad against Rand Paul that accuses the republican of being, well, kinda freaky. Many of you are probably well aware of the accusation that while in college, Paul kidnapped a fellow female student, forced her to do bong hits and then bow down to Aqua Buddha. That's right, Aqua Buddha. If next week's news contains the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I think we should all be unsurprised.

• Anyway! That weird tidbit came out back in August, but now the ad has placed it front and center, especially since Paul's boxers are in a total twist over the matter. Plus the candidates just had a debate where Conway would not let Aqua Buddha go, leading Paul to demand he "be a man." The whole thing ended with hands unshook. Oh no they din't.
  

• The 360 kids are on the Aqua Buddha case for us. The verdict? Probably not as sinister as Conway would like everyone to believe. It seems the alleged kidnappee later claimed no one forced her to smoke pot and it all felt akin to being hazed. But it's also important to point out that she was disturbed enough by the incident that she broke off her friendship with Paul. While I don't support Conway on this, I'm still a bit uncomfortable with the total dismissiveness regarding the woman being taken.
  

• Also, argh, Conway WTF?! I'm not even in politics and I know that these kind of attacks always backfire. If there was a video of Paul praying to Aqua Buddha, yeah, then you could just sit back, shut up, and let the young him hang the current candidate. Even with video you have to be careful (yeah, I'm looking at you Alan Grayson). But the thing that's really killing me here is that Paul's policies are completely ridiculous. You already had a goldmine to exploit and you throw it away for Aqua Buddha?! Argh.

• For discussion, we had Paul Begala and Alex Castellanos. Paul defends, Alex dismisses. We are all very shocked by this. Anderson Cooper also falls in the dismissive camp. You know what I love? When we were talking about Chris Coons' college paper the republicans were very concerned. Now? Aw, those wacky college kids! Reverse it and you have the democrats. Pretty much the only consistent non-hypocrite here is our anchor. Gotta love the Silver Fox.

• Moving on to the treasure trove of crazy that is Sharron Angle. Remember when she ran that ad with fake scary illegal immigrants? Well, now there's a video of her talking to Hispanic students in which she says the following: "And, you know, I don't know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me." Wait, it gets better: "I have been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly." Bwah! I can't even. At this point she should just pull a Colbert and claim she doesn't see color.

• Anderson: "But it's interesting in this race. I mean, maybe it's just like a liberal media outside of the state which is focusing on a lot of her statements that she's made, because it doesn't seem to have any impact certainly within the state." Huh? Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but focusing on a candidate's statements makes the media liberal? No wonder conservatives think everyone is so biased.

• Things just keep getting worse for Eddie Bernice Johnson. Now we learn that she gave a scholarship to a student named Danielle O'Bannon, whose father oversees minority contracting at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. Guess who owns a stake in some airport newsstands? Ruh-roh.

• We're joined by corruption slayer Melanie Sloan, and Todd Gillman of "The Dallas Morning News." Though it looks pretty bad, Todd says they haven't been able to establish a quid pro quo. Melanie tells us that Danielle's mother claims her daughter got the scholarship because she knows Charlie Rangel's wife. Because that's much better! Oy.
  

• More on the Tiffany Hartley case:
  

• That's going to do it for me. The show wasn't bad, but I wasn't hugely interested most of the hour.