Some Minnesotans — Rep. Michele Bachmann and GOP Senate District 56 webmaster Randy Brown, among them — are unlikely to mourn its passing: Liberal MSNBC host Keith Olbermann is halting his “Worst Person in the World” feature. The news comes just days after Comedy Central star Jon Stewart lambasted the increasingly negative tone of cable political shows at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington.

Olbermann apparently didn’t like Stewart’s Saturday critique, especially the part where he felt lumped in with all political shows on cable. But he did acknowledge last night that he understands “the tone needs to change” on the show. “The anger in this news hour was not an original part of it, nor was it an artifice we added to it,” he said. Of the “Worst Person” feature, he explained:

Its satire and whimsy have gradually gotten lost in some anger, so in the spirit of the thing, as of right now, I am unilaterally suspending that segment with an eye towards discontinuing it. We don’t know how that works long term. We might bring it back. We might bring back something similar to it, might kill it outright, and next week we will solicit your input.Its just that today, given the serious stuff we have to start covering tomorrow, we think its the right thing to do short term and then we will see what happens. And we’ll also see if anyone else, on tv, or radio, will do something similar.

The segment has featured Minnesotans a few times, but most prominently Bachmann. In October 2006, she merited a mention for telling congregants at Living Word Christian Center that God called her to run for Congress. In August 2008, she was featured for her comment that Nancy Pelosi needn’t worry about saving the planet from global warming because “someone” — Jesus — “did that over 2,000 years ago.”

Brown was the most recent to draw Olbermann’s attention. This August, he posted a video on a district GOP website that compared the attractiveness of GOP women with Democratic women — Helen Thomas, Rosie O’Donnell and Michele Obama, among others — who were shown in unflattering and often photoshopped photos accompanied by the song “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

Said Olbermann: “Just remember it anytime you hear Sarah Palin or anybody else in the GOP complain about sexism or misogyny on the part of the mainstream media or the Democrats.”

Randy Brown

Brown, as MnIndy first reported, posted a video that compares how “hot” women from the Democratic and Republican parties are. The Democrats — represented by Janet Reno (with photoshopped chest hair), a grimacing Hillary Clinton and Rosie O’Donnell’s head fused onto the body of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, among others — are shown atop a soundbed of Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?” Of the video, Olbermann said: “Just remember it anytime you hear Sarah Palin or anybody else in the GOP complain about sexism or misogyny on the part of the mainstream media or the Democrats. Randy Brown of the Minnesota GOP — plus, I understand the group Baha Men is pissed — America’s worst person in the world.”

In another development, Republican Party of Minnesota communications director Mark Drake demanded a change to our story — one that puts distance between the state party and the local SD 56 party unit. Drake called to say he wanted the headline on our initial report on the video changed to reflect that it wasn’t the statewide GOP, but merely a local district group, that chose to embed a video that one of its endorsed women candidates, Andrea Kieffer, dubbed “juvenile.” (The headline now refers to the “SD56 GOP” rather than the “Minn. GOP.”) The video itself, he said, is “wrong and inappropriate.”

(For the record, Olbermann incorrectly called Brown the “webmaster of the Minnesota state Republican Party.” He’s the webmaster of the SD56 site only — or he was: his byline hasn’t appeared since this story broke and since district GOP-endorsed candidate Kathy Lohmer called for his resignation.)

Apparently, we’re not alone in fielding Drake’s complaints. Mother Jones’ copy editor Adam Weinstein tells the Minnesota Independent that Drake called his publication after it ran a story on the SD56 web video and “berated” the magazine’s receptionist. Drake later emailed Weinstein to declare the story to be “completely false” and demanded a retraction. (Gawker contributing editor Jeff Neumann confirms that he was “hit with the ALL CAPS Drake email assault” too for his story.)

The Mother Jones story now has this addendum:

After he placed several abusive phone calls to our receptionist and a frantic email demanding a “retraction” to this “completely false” story, Minnesota GOP communications director Mark Drake berated me on the phone for a good ten minutes. Besides being unclear on the differences between “retraction,” ”correction,” ”clarification,” ”conversation,” “irate braying,” and “pointless screaming,” he made the point that the video was on a district GOP site, not the state GOP’s site, and that he’d never heard of the webmaster before. While expressing regret over the video’s content, he said the 56th district was one of more than 100 autonomous Republican parties in the state, and his umbrella organization wasn’t responsible. He then refused to answer follow-up questions regarding what action, if any, had been taken by the state GOP to make the local group accountable for its actions. Based on the one or two facts he could assert between loud declamations, I changed the ID of webmaster Randy Brown above. Mark, if you’re reading this and want to explain what steps the state GOP is taking besides abusing reporters by phone, give us a call—and try being nice to the receptionist this time.

Watch the section from Olbermann, who undoubtedly will be receiving a Drake call of his own today.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Reader Kate writes in to ask whether Bachmann — who told O’Reilly on Wednesday, “I don’t need government to be successful” — has ever received any kind of public assistance. One bit of government help we know her family has received is farm subsidies. As Karl Bremer reported at Eric Black Ink two years ago:

A 949-acre Wisconsin farming operation — in which Bachmann owns up to a quarter-million-dollars interest — collected $47,128 in federal farm subsidies between 2004-2005. That same operation—the Bachmann Farm Family Limited Partnership — has collected as much as $127,868 in federal farm subsidies since the partnership was established in 2001…

…On her 2007 Congressional financial disclosure form, Bachmann lists “Bachmann Farm Family LP, Independence, WI,” as an asset with a value up to $250,000, that produced 2006 income of between $2,501-$5,000…

…Paul Bachmann has collected $127,868 in federal farm subsidies since he formed the Bachmann Farm Family Limited Partnership with Michele and possibly others in 2001, according to the Environmental Working Group.

But even if Bachmann didn’t show up on Olbermann’s show, she did get a characteristically feisty reply from the liberal MSNBC host. To Bachmann’s opinion that interest in her by news outlets like MSNBC is “almost like I have personal stalkers,” Olbermann replied:

“Having had an actual stalker myself, I think the Congresswoman needs to apologize to women (and men) whose lives are blighted and ruined by such terror and threat. Not even in the mildest of senses – of journalists whose aggressiveness might verge colloquially into ‘stalking’ – is she anywhere close to being such a victim.”

Watch Bachmann on The O’Reilly Factor:

“Quite honestly I don’t even know anything about MSNBC,” said Bachmann. “It’s not a network that I watch, and most of the American people agree with that assessment. They aren’t watching it either. And that’s why Fox’s ratings — I mean, it’s like, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC combined. I think Fox even exceeded one of the major networks last week. They’re on the ascendency.”

Bachmann praised conservative bloggers for getting out the truth past the filters of the old media. “I didn’t fear my own editorial boards in Minneapolis-St. Paul when I lived there,” she said. “I’m certainly not going to fear the likes of Keith Olbermann.”

Video, shot by the Washington Independent’s Lazar Backovic, after the jump:

Photos: bachmann.house.gov, oberstar.org

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s talk of stopping health care reform by fasting, praying and wrist-slitting has prompted not only lefty pundits but a top Democratic colleague to question what’s going on between her ears. Jim Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, remarked Tuesday: “I don’t think God’s talking to her anymore. I think she’s hearing other voices.”

Bachmann said in 2006 that she was running for Congress on God’s recommendation (video), and last month said she would run for president if she “felt that’s what the Lord was calling me to do.”

It wasn’t a one-off gag line for Oberstar, who earlier called Bachmann “a sweet woman” but had this advice for elderly health care reform advocates in Duluth who were planning to visit her: ”Tell her that there are voices other than God that are informing her.” [Via Tom Elko]

It wasn’t immediately clear whether one of those voices is that of Rep. Ron Paul, who has Bachmann’s ear on financial policy and will appear with her at a town hall in her district this month.

Oberstar’s comments are of the sort more commonly heard from cable TV yakkers like Ed Schultz, whose show featured her “psycho talk” two days in a row, and Dan Savage, who linked God-inspired politics to hate rhetoric of the worst sort:

When you have a party that claims to speak for God or says God is on its side, the rhetoric heats up and the anger heats up, because it’s not just a battle about ideas and positions and what’s good for the country and bad for the country. It’s a battle about what God wants and what God doesn’t want. And it’s easier to demagogue about your enemies and to despise them and to dehumanize them in this really personal and vicious way. And the religious right is fomenting this kind of hatred in this country at our peril. I really do think that the Michele Bachmanns of the world and the Glenn Becks of the world are actively and consciously, or subconsciously, trying to get — I’m just going to say it — trying to get the president killed. This kind of rhetoric — this paranoid style on the religious right, from Birchers to birthers — doesn’t usually end well. And somebody’s got to put the brakes on it. Unfortunately in the Republican Party, there’s no adults left in the room. There are only the Michele Bachmanns and the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs running the show.

Here’s MSNBC video of Savage (via City Pages) and Schultz (via our sister site the Colorado Independent):

Here’s Elias on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” April 14:

So says MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. He spent seven minutes fact-checking Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s recent interview with KTLK’s Chris Baker. Olbermann pulls in Chris Hayes from The Nation to add some analysis to the critique of Minnesota’s most conservative member of Congress.

Mix up the letters of two names in the news this week — “Bob Poe” and “Olbermann” — and I’m pretty sure you get “Doppelganger.” At least that’s the word that came to mind when I saw a photo of Poe (pictured on the right), a leader in Alaskan business and government circles who announced this week he’s running as a Democrat to replace Sarah Palin as governor in 2010. Now combine that news with another story: Right-wing film documentarian John Ziegler says that when Palin glimpsed a photo of MSNBC newsman Keith Olbermann (on the left), “she literally let out a shriek and, pointing to his photograph, declared, ‘THAT guy is EVIL!’”

And a campaign slogan is born.

If, over the long run, we expect Franken to win 51% of corrected ballots, his odds of winning the recount may be quite strong — in fact, he may be the prohibitive favorite depending on the number of recounted ballots.

UPDATE: Silver has already revisited this in a new post. His adjusted take on the situation: 

I hesitate to say this, but I think the evidence points on balance toward Franken being a slight favorite to win the recount.

UPDATE: In yet another installment, Silver says what we already knew: It’s a tie. 

 It is very, very close. 

A lot rides on the margin between Franken and Coleman staying small when votes are certified today, and on the belief, buttressed by exit polls, that under-counted ballots will break for Franken. Yet when he appeared Nov. 3 on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” Silver didn’t put much stock in exit poll data:

Olbermann: Nate, when the exit polls leak out tomorrow … is there anything that you actually want to look at, anything that’s an actual valid indicator, or should you just throw them out as they come in?
Silver: No, totally throw them out. These things are not anything they’re cracked up to be. They’ve had a Democratic lean for years and years.

Silver may have been dissing exit polls’ utility in predicting election results, however, not in conducting after-the-fact demographic analysis.

In any case, it’s the kind of in-depth analysis Silver lavished only on select candidate preference polls during the heat of the campaign season. Now that it’s all over but the counting in a few places like Minnesota, the former baseball stats geek is apparently able and willing to turn his full mental powers on an individual non-presidential race to produce an at-length interpretation that leaves his readers’ heads spinning. “Swear to God, Nate, you’ve broken my brain with this one,” writes one. ”My goodness Nate — do you ever sleep? You need to get out more,” advises another. Adds someone named Bob: “Your sadistical analsis [sic] leaves me stunned.”