Wednesday’s Rachel Maddow Show started us off with a bang – or at least with some yelling-at-bankers porn, which is almost as satisfying.

Representative Frank dropped by to express some good wholesome American indignation and guarded hopes for new financial regulations that might keep these guys from making juice loans in order to pay artificially inflated prices for their shares in bad mortgages on Barbie Dream Houses.

During the segment Rachel admitted that driving roofing nails into little banker dolls is very satisfying on a primal level, but might not be the very best focus for moving forward. (But keep up with the nails just in case.)

Fortunately, Rachel understood that many viewers really, really need a villain at whom they can boo unreservedly right now, so she gave us Stewart Parnell, owner of the Peanut Corporation of America and an excellent target for your Bronx cheers and rotten eggs.

Parnell is the reason you and your peanut butter and banana sandwich currently have trust issues, having decided that those dumb old tests for salmonella contamination were a little pricey.

Mr. Parnell, if you want to do a service for the nation (other than GOING TO PRISON), please grow a Snidely Whiplash mustache so we can get fully into the spirit of this thing.

Rachel’s “Talk Me Down” segment started with her coverage of the Stimmie Awards, during which our elected officials congratulated themselves on agreeing to a bill that every single person in the country wants to spit on for different reasons.

Her subsequent talk with economist Jeffrey Sachs made it clear that we’re in for at least a year or three of making salads with hoarded relish packets.

Based on that and the rest of tonight’s news, none of us are getting a restful night’s sleep for at least that long, so I’ll meet you at the 7-11 to pick up some caffeine, filler-based meat products, and one of our nation’s six remaining print magazines. I call dibs on the last bag of Funyuns.

On the bright side, once this finally goes through we’ll stop hearing the phrase “national stimulus package,” which means maybe the 12-year-old in my head will settle down and stop snickering.

Things got a little lighter with “Ms. Information” as Rachel looked at the amazing goat rodeo that is state politics. We got a look at one hilariously ballsy backroom power play that worked and the monumentally stupid destruction of one that didn’t.

(We also learned that Rachel does a really good Homer Simpson “D’oh!” Someone please make a ringtone of that.)

Hey, Republicans! Maybe no one mentioned this to you, but OTHER PEOPLE CAN SEE YOUR TWITTER FEED.

Were you hoping for some grisly, maddeningly sad news from the Middle East? Oh, good, you’re in luck.

The excellent Richard Engel, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, checked in from Iraq to report that in the midst of a new swirl of violence, the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad has opened.

Unfortunately, when construction started it was under the assumption that embassy employees would be blissfully skipping around Missionaccomplishedville exchanging high-fives and recipe tips with the locals.

700 million dollars later, the embassy is best described, in honor of Ms. Maddow’s fondly remembered use of “bullpuckey,” as a complete clusterbonk.

Rachel’s final guest was Sam Stein, the reporter from The Huffington Post who managed to piss off every other journalist in the galaxy by using his scary Internet journalist electronic mind rays to force President Obama to call on him during Monday night’s press conference.

Ari Fleischer, who for some reason is under the impression that he is still in any way relevant, gave us all a great big early Valentine’s Day gift by issuing a statement that he would never, ever, ever have allowed the President to call on an icky old blog reporter, forgetting about the part when he totally did.

This allowed Rachel to bring up Jeff Gannon, a.k.a. James Guckert, a male escort and fake reporter for the fake conservative news service Talon News, who for some reason was allowed White House access even though Congress denied him a press pass.

Hey, Republicans! OTHER PEOPLE CAN SEE YOUR INTERNET PROSTITUTION ADS!

Rachel awesomely insisted on referring to Gannon/Guckert as “that hooker guy” throughout the segment.

For those of you playing at home, that brings the current single-broadcast record standings to:

Bullpuckey – 10
Hooker – 9

Bullpuckey: Still the beloved champion.

Oh, yes – there was also an actual news part with Stein speculating on the possibility of whether Bush Administration officials might actually get investigated and start taking extended fact-finding trips to the hoosegow.

Until tomorrow, be well and Tweet discreetly.