Flashpoint TV commentators Kirk Humphreys and Mike Turpen took center stage recently at a Shawnee business luncheon.
Hat tip: ShawneeNewsStar

It was a very bad night for the political masterminds at Chesapeake Energy.

State Rep. Randy Terrill, who has bitch-slapped the company more times than a New Jersey pimp, completed his dominance of the organization as he easily won re-election to the House of Representatives, where he is the Chairman of the House Revenue and Tax Committee.

If that wasn’t enough, Chesapeake lost their boy, appointed Corporation Commissioner Jim Roth.

Despite the contrivance of the state’s two largest daily newspapers and the riches provided by the companies whose water he carried, Roth went down to defeat at the hands of Republican Dana Murphy. Murphy’s win confounded even the best of pollsters, most of whom believed Roth would win comfortably.

Consultant to Pat Hall and his cohort Mike Turpen, who are on the Chesapeake payroll, were chief strategists for Roth, and are being ridiculed for taking what seemed to be a sure win and turning into a defeat.

Now all eyes are on Murphy to see how she will treat Chesapeake, who bankrolled the vile and vicious attacks leveled on her created by their consultants. “She needs to paddle their butt. They’ll be crawling on the belly to her with cash, and everybody’s watching to see if she puts them in their place, or if she sells out, one corporation insider tells OKPNS. And observers say another big funder has something to fear: AT&T, since it is widely rumored that a Bob Anthony-Dana Murphy alliance is a certainly.

“Politics is show business for ugly people. I mean that’s why a lot of people get into this thing. It’s all about ego.”- Mike Turpen

Will someone please tell Turpen NO CAFFEINE before taping the show!

“I quit watching the show because Turpen lost it along time ago. He has been ridiculus (sic) with his sound bytes and attempts to dominate the air time with his tirades.” - Comment from a reader

Hat tip: OklahomaCR

Oh, yes, we believe the Channel 4 poll because they continue to demonstrate such high ethical and journalistic standards.

NOT!!!

Just days after a Democrat chatboard outed the now-discredited Flashpoint duo for hosting a fundraiser for a politician they had unethically pimped on their show. We have the real evidence. (Click here)

Here’s a comment from one of the disgruntled Dems:

“Why are Turpen and Stuart Price allowed to support Republicans while holding positions within our party? Hello, ODP Chairman Ivan Holmes, how about sending out one of your press releases or holding one of your town square meetings to explain this?”

So Why Is Commissioner Jeff Cloud Smiling?

KFOR released a poll showing the object of their misplaced and inappropriate affection leading in the 6-year seat for Corporation Commission. The poll shows Jeff Cloud leading Democrat Charles Gray 52-37%.

First, given his incumbency, Cloud should be embarrassed at the margin: the incumbent should be leading by a much larger margin over Gray. Second, who in this world is going to believe KFOR? Considering the unprofessional and unethical brown-nosing Turpen and Humphreys have given Cloud, we can safely assume the race is much, much closer. After all the revelations we’ve broken here about Cloud’s controversial activities, it could be Gray is leading the race. What we do know is that anybody who believes a KFOR poll is, shall we say, unwise to do so.

OKPNS has chronicled over and over the serial dissembling and brazen dishonesty of Flashpoint. Once again, we know they’re lying. How do we know? Their lips are moving!

Related:

OKPNS: (7/23/08) Rush IS Right: Helps OKPNS Expose Edwards, Cloud as Liberals

In the 1986 Democrat primary for governor, then Attorney General Mike Turpen, the favorite to win the Democratic nomination for governor, was forced into a runoff by a then unknown David Walters, who had used money from rich buddies to buy ads belittling the appearance of the young AG. The ads used Turpen’s face superimposed on a clock with the hands spinning and an announcer proclaiming that “Turpen time is up.”

Turpen, beside himself over Walter’s conniving tactics, appeared on live television, dripping in sweat , stuttering, stammering and generally looked unhinged. Kind of like he did in this video:

But Turpen turned “celebrity” when he was paired with Burns Hargis on the long-running “Flashpoint” program, which was the most influential political show in Oklahoma until revelations of Turpen’s censorship of anti-Edmondson journalists, his undeclared pimping of clients and Hargis’ departure all combined to sink the show’s reputation. That, and Turpen’s use of the stinky dough he’s received from WAD Edmondson for doing next to nothing in the phony tobacco suits, have made him a laughingstock as he tries to buy his way into polite Oklahoma City society.

Turpen has over the years tried to emulate former Attorney General Larry Derryberry and become one of the most politically skilled and respected operators in the state, but he had neither the skills nor the table manners to garner that respect, and after ruining the Democratic Party, set out to buy his way in respectability. Like a trailer park dandy who wins the lottery, he’s spreading it around, or as James Carville says, “drag a dollar through a trailer park…….”

For those of you who weren’t fortunate enough to see Turpen’s political time expire on the tube in 1986, we’re sorry. We’re even more sorry that KFOR has edited out the exchange last Thursday night between anchor Kevin Ogle and Turpen in which the name dropping 2008 version kept blabbing and going off maniacally until Ogle finally had to tell producers to “cut him (Turpen) off.”

“Susan and I have hosted presidential candidates, first ladies. We’ve spent the night at the White House…”

“I visited personally with Bill Clinton…I think he (Obama) laid out tonight what Bill Clinton told me yesterday at lunch.”

(Click here to listen) AMAZING!!!!

Turpen gets so excited, he even throws in a pandering and patronizing shout out to African Americans! We almost expected him to break out into a chorus of “We Shall Overcome.”

“I got a text from my daughter Sarah just a few minutes ago. She told me that they’re studying in school today Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King.”

Too bad you can’t seen Ogle’s throat slashing gesture as he frantically tries to cut Turpen off.
For those of you shocked to learn that KFOR has edited out the Turpen’s meltdown on their website, this further cements the notion that new KFOR management will do nothing to stop Turpen from ruining their journalistic reputation as the station goes into the toilet.

Have at it, give us your best captions. Note: Bill Clinton’s look is priceless!

Mike Turpen pictures courtesy of the “Inside the Beltway” blog.

Chris Casteel: “Definitely looks like Turpen took this one with the former president himself.”

This scathing 2005 report from a nationally recognized think tank basically accuses W.A.D. Edmondson of using his office in manner that more resembles a plaintiff’s law firm than as the state’s top legal official.

Capital Research Center:

Summary: Oklahoma’s Drew Edmondson, Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, Illinois’ Lisa Madigan and Michigan’s Mike Cox are little known outside their states. But as their states’ attorney general they exercise an extraordinary power that can be easily abused.

State Attorneys General: A National Association of Aspiring Governors?

The office of state attorney general reached its high-water mark in prestige in March 1999, when eleven tobacco companies reached a settlement with the attorney generals of 46 states and agreed to pay the states $246 billion dollars over the next 25 years. State attorneys general were the new giant-killers and anti-smoking advocacy groups were overjoyed.

In the past half-dozen years many other nonprofit advocacy groups have attempted to emulate the strategy used by the anti-smoking groups. They are looking to state AGs to help them bring all sorts of corporations to heel. The most targeted businesses are gun-makers, which have been sued for “gun violence,” and fast-food restaurants, blamed for the “epidemic of obesity.” But ambitious state attorneys general are devising creative theories of liability as they seek out new targets of opportunity. The private sector is a bulging piñata and the AGs wield a big stick.

Drew Edmondson: Star Activist

An aggressive and veteran attorney general is Oklahoma Democrat W.A. “Drew” Edmondson, now in his eleventh year in office. Last June he received the highest award conferred by the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) and was touted by Vermont attorney general William Sorrell, NAAG’s president, as “a star in our ranks.” Edmondson was born to politics and has pursued a career in public life from an early age.

The tobacco settlement for Oklahoma generated $250 million in private attorneys’ fees. Edmondson hired two out-of-state firms (that got $150 million), which then selected four Oklahoma firms from a list he gave them (they split the other $100 million). Earlier Edmondson had gotten Oklahoma law changed to permit him to file lawsuits independently of the request of a state agency.

The connections between Edmondson and those local law firms raised some eyebrows. The Daily Oklahoman reported that the law firm Riggs, Abney, Neal, Turpen, Orbison & Lewis received $30 million for its participation in the suit and that 29 attorneys and employees of the firm contributed thousands of dollars to Edmondson’s campaign for attorney general in the years following the settlement. Many also contributed to Edmondson’s election campaign before the firm was awarded the tobacco contract. After the suit, Edmondson also received campaign donations from Preston Trimble and Norman & Edem; they received $10 million and $30 million, respectively, for their work on the case. The choice of Trimble, a former district attorney and judge who had only been in private practice for a few years, also struck some as favoritism. Trimble had been a special prosecutor appointed to investigate donations to Edmondson’s opponent in his 1994 campaign for AG. Read more…

Despite the capitol press corps’s contrivance, more information is coming out about W.A.D Edmondson’s plaintiff lawyer activities.We’ve chronicled the press corps’ suppression of controversy regarding Edmondson’s office many many times: the charges by his Republican challenger James Dunn in the 2006 election that were ignored by the Oklahoma media; the attempt by Edmondson crony Mike Turpen to censure a KFOR story by reporter Ali Meyer in December 2006 that raised serious questions about the legitimacy of the poultry lawsuits.

The lazy and highly partisan press corps, which in essence serves as the propaganda arm for these frivolous lawsuits, thought these and other reports were not worthy of distribution in Oklahoma, but today’s story story in LegalNewsLine.com titled, “Call for AG reform growing,” demonstrates Oklahoma’s thought police have not been entirely successful in purging the record:

McGraw is not alone. The San Francisco Examiner reported that then-New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid “received more than a quarter of all her 2002 campaign donations from liabilities lawyers, some of whom received significant state contracts. Similar controversies have surrounded Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson and Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon.”

Edmondson is a public official, and his actions are sometimes controversial. They deserve to be discussed, and the capitol press corps should act like journalists instead of serving as his ‘wingman.’ Thanks to LegalNewsLine.com, Oklahomans can make up their own mind, not that fed to them by the propagandists in the 4th floor press room.

Related:

McCurtain Daily Gazette Editorial: Oklahoma has its own media coverup scandal

“Recently, a judge found there was insufficient evidence to go to trial with allegations that the multi-county grand jury made against some unpaid members on the Kiamichi Technology Center Board of Education.

If there were any justice in the world, the judge in the case would make the state pay the legal expenses for the accused board members.

If there were truly any justice, all those legal expenses for the defendants would come out of the budget of the Oklahoma attorney general’s office, so that he could feel just a little of the pain he has caused the people who were falsely accused by a manipulated multi-county grand jury system.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson is making noises about a settlement in the poultry lawsuits. Taking a menacing tone, Edmondson says the companies may go broke if they lose to him in federal court. The trial is scheduled to go before a jury in September of 2009.There was no mention of how much his buddy Mike Turpen will receive for doing nothing, but Turpen will need more cash as he is exhausting the proceeds from his share of doing nothing for the phony tobacco settlement to buy his way into polite Oklahoma City society. From LegalNewsline.com:

 Edmondson: Poultry industry ‘avoiding a day of reckoning’ By Chris Rizo
“A handful of large poultry companies risk going broke if they don’t settle with state Attorney General W.A. Drew Edmondson over claims the companies contaminated Oklahoma waterways, he told Legal Newsline.“

Word is that Mike Turpen will emcee the Oklahoma Academy Salute on August 22nd in Tulsa along with Frank Keating. But don’t write the evening off just yet, although the snooze factor will be high considering who will be at the podium, The Capitol Steps will be in the house making for a truly entertaining evening!