Quote of the Day - Sports Edition

"...Though Purdue began the season 1-5, it can become bowl eligible with three more wins. Unlikely as that may sound, consider that of their remaining opponents -- Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan State and Indiana -- only the Spartans have a winning conference record. 'They can do the math,' [Purdue Coach Danny] Hope said of his players. 'They can read.'" - from today's clueless Kaplan Daily. Yeah, they can do math and read, but they can't score. Wisconsin 37, Purdon't 0.

(Image: Old Style Wisconsin)

Liar, Liar

Loopy Lou Dobbs and the taco terrorists.

Dick "The Dick" Cheney and his tragic case of amnesia.

And, of course, the hive of wingnuttia, the Fox Nutwork 24/7 (hilarious Stewart piece). (BTW, don't expect anything close to this insightful an analysis from Howie "Get That Job?" Kurtz.)

Wingnuts are such crappy liars.

Item: U.S. Navy Ship Fires on Polish City

No Polish jokes, please.

The Most Dishonest Columnist Strikes Again

Wanker extraordinaire and holder of the "Most Dishonest Columnist" trophy Michael "Mushroom Cloud" Gerson has another gem in today's Kaplan Daily. This time he's trying to convince anyone who's been in a coma for the past 9 months to believe it's Obama and the Democrats who are acting "small" by actually pushing back against the unrelenting Rethug attacks. The birthers, teabaggers, town hall clowns, secessionists, socialist/ fascist/ Hitler smears, Limpballs, Boo-Hoo, Manatee, "Waterloo," "Party of No," etc., that's the work of the true midgets in American politics. Oh, add Mushroom Cloud to that list, too.

(Photo: Is this a douche bag or what?!)

Winky and Quayle: Perfect Together

Former VP Dan "Deer in the Headlights" Quayle and former Alaska Governor and snowbilly grifter Winky You Betcha had very similar poll numbers following their appearances at the Rethug conventions of 1988 and 2008, respectively. A significant majority of Americans saw both as unqualified to be President and largely incompetent for their jobs.

Of course, both Winky and Deer were heavily promoted by Wee Willie Kristol and the neocon clown network that is continually seeking candidates for public office that are willing to adopt their neocon/Likudnik message without question or reservation. Will Joe the Plumber be their next project?

Commander-in-Chief

Here's a photo of President Obama doing something that neither Preznit Dumbya nor The Dick had the guts or decency to do: receive the bodies of servicemen killed in either Iraq or Afghanistan. It's called taking responsibility and paying respects. As the Commander-in-Chief, the President is ultimately responsible for our armed forces, and bears the burden of sending them into harm's way. It's one thing to send them off with flags waving and bands playing; it's another thing to accept the consequences of the decisions that you make, and honor the fallen when they return. Obama has.

Expect wingnuts everywhere to find some excuse to criticize this action by the President. But the fact remains, Dumbya and The Dick weren't willing to put themselves with the fallen soldiers as Obama has.

(AP photo by P.M. Monsivais)

Quote of the Day

"You know what's worse than being sick and not having health insurance? Having to sit through the Lieberman filibuster that kept it from you." -- Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.

Lieberliar's Unhealthy Move

Sen. Joe Lieberliar (Aetna-CT) announced yesterday that he would side with his Rethug partners in voting against a public option in the Senate health insurance reform bill. In a typical profile in courage, Lieberliar waited until the Democratic leadership announced that an opt-out public option would be in the Senate version of the bill before peeing in the Democrats' punchbowl. In so doing, he's on record as favoring no change in the status quo. . .big surprise.

Now we see how Lieberliar rewarded President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate after they forgave him for aggressively campaigning against the President in 2008, and allowed him to be the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Oversight Committee (which he's used recently to pimp the Fux News inspired Obama "czar" phony controversy). At the first strategic opportunity, the Senate Dems need to kick him out of their caucus and strip him of his committee leadership. Let the Rethugs claim him; he was never our 60th vote anyway.

UPDATE: driftglass has a recap of Lieberliar's betrayals here.

UPDATE 2: Paul Begala points out that Lieberliar opposed President Clinton's health care reform initiative in the '90s -- even when it didn't have a public option.

Winky for Mother of the Year

Levi Johnston's talking more about life with former Alaska Governor Winky You Betcha. On the CBS Early Show, Johnston said that Winky often jokingly referred to her Down Syndrome child Trig as her "retarded baby," and that daughter Bristol was more of the mother to Trig than Winky, who was never around (maybe she was practicin' her "fancy pageant walkin'").

Johnston has promised to share more behind-the-scenes dirt on life with Winky and the Wasilla Snowbillies. So Winky's adoring boosters better get cracking on that Mother of the Year award before Levi spills more beans.

From the Rethug Assignment Desk...

...straight to the front page of the Kaplan Daily comes this expose of AARP, which supposedly stands to benefit from their support of health insurance reform. Since House Rethug staffers are quoted freely in the article, one must assume they acted as "reporter" Dan Eggen's assignment editor. Weighing in with equally altruistic motives is a spokesperson for Alliant Group who was a staffer for Sen. Charles "My Assly Is" Grassley (Rethug-IA) before the revolving door transported him to his new career. It would be beyond the ability of Kaplan's crack reporters to cover all the straight-up chicanery coming from the anti-reform side; it's so much easier to just take this weasel smear masquerading as a news story, cut off the Rethug press release header and call it a column. The Fox Nutwork will be proud of you boys!

Department of Unintentional Humor

"A good time to be a conservative." So says the headline of neocon wanker Wee Willie Kristol's op-ed in the Kaplan Post. "A good time" in the sense, apparently, that losing election after election is a good time. And Wee Willie's estimation of where the "center of gravity" will be for the conservative Rethugs in 2012? With Winky, Boo Hoo and Pills, that's who. (Added irony: There's a picture of Winky resigning as governor of Alaska that accompanies Wee Willie's wank. Hee hee hee).

So many times, Wee Willie has been dead wrong in his predictions, but this time we fervently hope he's right. Adding the percentages of Americans who view that trio favorably might get you to 30% in the polls. Which would mean more good times for Wee Willie we suppose.

"Lie, Terrify, Win, Repeat"

Check out Media Matters' latest compilation of the lies and distortions emanating from the right-wing noise machine, led by Fux News.

After 10 months of increasingly unhinged and deceitful attacks against the Obama Administration, the wingnut Wurlitzer is enjoying cover from the Beltway Media villagers, who exchanged their press credentials for pom-poms during the run up to the invasion of Iraq and who now can't see that their "sister news organization" (as ABC's Jake "Tippy" Tapper put it) is a Republican-operative-run political operation geared at bringing down the President and his agenda.

Snowe Daze

Maine Rethuglican Senator Olympia "Sleet &" Snowe has been the lone holdout in the Rethuglican Party willing to bargain with the Democratic majority on the health insurance reform bill. The fact that she's exercising so much influence among her collegues is a testament to the obsessive quest for "bipartisanship" by the Obama Administration. But as Howard Fineman points out in his Newsweek column:

"In case the White House hasn't noticed, Republicans in Congress are engaged in what amounts to a sitdown strike. They don't like anything about Obama or his policies; they have no interest in seeing him succeed. Despite the occasional protestation to the contrary, the GOP has no intention of helping him pass any legislation."

The results of this obsession may be a watered-down bill that doesn't truly reform health insurance, and will cause a drop-off in support for Obama by his base.

So instead of courting a reluctant Sleet & Snowe for "bipartisan" window dressing, the Administration might want to get its act together and get the best possible bill that provides a public option and other reforms. They'll be judged at the polls for that, and not on the makeup of the votes in Congress.

Slurp of the Week

As we've noted, Conventional Wisdom guided missile "Dude" Chris Cillizza loves lists. He's got one in the Kaplan Daily every Monday! Today he's got the 10 most influential GOP pols! And Number 1 is (no, not that Number 1!): Winky You Betcha!! Yes, the same Winky that only gets about 20% in polling of Rethugs' favorite for 2012! The same Winky whose unfavorable numbers are at an all-time high! That won't stop the Dude from slurping Winky!

Notice how fluid the Conventional Wisdom is in the world of Dude Cillizza, comparing last June's list to today's: Dick "The Dick" Cheney is out, as is Perfesser Poot Gingrich; Blowdry Bob McDonnell dropped from #4 to #10; Winky You Betcha wasn't even in the top 5! That Conventional Wisdom is hard to keep up with, even for a Beltway Kool Kid like the Dude.

(Photo: The Dude: "Sluuuurrrrrrppppp!")

Faux Outrage Over Faux News

Joe Conason's article in Salon is a terrific rebuttal to the right wing pundits and the Jake "Tippy" Tapper-style apologists who want us to believe that Fux News is a legitimate news organization, rather than an arm of the Rethuglican Party. He's especially good at reminding them what Nixonian hatred of the press really was, and that it's ironic that some defenders of Fux work for the newspaper that Nixon tried to bring down: the Washington Post. Fux News founder and president Roger Ailes was a Nixon operative, and was one of legendary smear merchant Lee Atwater's colleagues in the Rethuglican apparatus. As Conason notes:

"The objective for Ailes. . .is not fairness or balance. The objective is to win by whatever means necessary. That includes marketing himself and his employees as high-minded truth seekers and innocent victims of snotty liberalism -- much in the mode of old Nixon."

Read the whole article to get a true sense of how misguided the "outrage" over outing Fux as a partisan organization really is.