We need to watch Fox more often. Last night, Sean Hannity lit a huge spliff and passed it around the studio. By the time it reached Dana Perino it was a roaring bonfire, and she could barely keep her hands on the table while she riffed on Fort Hood:

PERINO: And we had a terrorist attack on our country. And we should call it what it is. Because we need to face up to it so that we can prevent it from happening again.

HANNITY: I agree with you. And why won’t they say what you just so simply said?

PERINO: They want to do all of their investigations. I don’t know. All of the thinking that goes into it. But we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term. I hope they’re not looking at this politically. I do think we ought it to the American people to call it what it is.

Three hits later, she was off on this wild theory about how reality’s just a social construct, dude, and if we all just believe that George W. Bush kept us safe, well, then it must be true.

Perino: ‘We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.’ [Think Progress]

It is with not a little trepidation that we recommend today’s New York Times column by Maureen Dowd. She of the snarky tongue who adores celebrities so much she wholeheartedly endorsed Arnie for California Governor is often more fluffy than substantive, but in today’s ruminations, we feel, she does an admirable job of nailing the Obama administration’s current malaise right square on its thick head:

It couldn’t have been easy for Craig, a special counsel in the Clinton White House who directed the response on impeachment, to break away from the Clintons and help the insurgent Obama shatter Hillary’s dream of shattering the Oval glass ceiling….

I often wondered if Craig and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, the other former Clinton official who helped undermine Hillary’s foreign policy record, would have done so if they had known that after turning on Hillary they would once more end up working beside her; if they had known that Obama can often be more interested in wooing opponents than tending to those who put themselves on the line for him.

What’s most chilling is that, with Republicans biting the hand every time Obama extends it, the President keeps doing it, even as his loyalists and supporters feel ever more marginalized and ignored.

We’re coming seriously close to souring on this presidency. Where’s the change we were promised?

Serolf Divad wrote this post from a Panera coffee shop, sitting next to a window, watching as a steady rain drizzled from a gray and dispiriting sky.

There are too many sharpshooters picking off balloons in Sarah Palin’s parade of a book for us to celebrate every one, but we’ll make an exception for a dude from Alaska you’ve never heard about:

Former Gov. Sarah Palin’s book, “Going Rogue,” blames her first legislative director for moves early in her term that helped poison her relationship with state lawmakers. But the ex-aide, John Bitney, calls Palin’s account a fabrication and said he wishes his former boss would leave him alone.

“I’m just pilloried right and left and turned into the big bad wolf here for stuff I didn’t do,” said Bitney, who is now an aide to Valdez Republican Rep. John Harris. “It’s like I’m this fictional character that she’s decided to make me out to be this sort of incompetent slob.”

Why do we like it so? Let us count the ways.

Read more »

We blew our Aristocrats reference last week, so we’re stuck with something more mundane:

American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert won’t be appearing on “Good Morning America” tomorrow.

TVNewser has learned ABC News canceled the concert after Lambert’s sexually charged performance at the American Music Awards Sunday night. Lambert led men on leashes, dragged a woman by her foot, and smashed a man’s head into his crotch, all while singing his new single “For Your Entertainment.”

Just as quickly as ABC dropped Lambert, CBS picked him up for the Early Show, so you still have an alternative to Carl Kassel’s farewell tour. Although we’re reliably informed that you can see this kind of thing on Fox & Friends any given morning.

Good Morning America Cancels Adam Lambert Concert [TVNewser]

McClatchy reports that Barack Obama will announce next Tuesday his plans to send 34,000 additional troops to Afghanistan:

The plan adopted by Obama would fall well short of the 80,000 troops McChrystal suggested in August as a “low-risk option” that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan.

It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a “high-risk” approach that called for 20,000 additional troops and a “medium-risk” option that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.

If you haven’t been keeping score, “40,000” is the magic number cited by Republicans (on top of 68,000 American troops already in-country) as the minimum needed to prevent incessant whining disaster — even though that’s only half of McChrystal’s slam-dunk estimate. But not even America’s most prominent National Guard deserter dares broach the full 80, so we’re left with what’s guaranteed to be a roaring debate about how six thousand troops means all the difference in the world.

Obama plans to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan [McClatchy]

Sarah Palin, who deserted her post as commander-in-chief of the Alaska National Guard, has some choice words for Barack Obama:

“There’s been a lack of acknowledgement by our president in understanding what it is that the American military provides in terms of, obviously, the safety, the security of our country,” Palin said during an interview with Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren. “I want him to acknowledge the sacrifices that these individual men and women — our sons, our daughters, our moms, our dads, our brothers and sisters — are providing this country to keep us safe.”

It’s understandable that Palin might have missed this, and this, not to mention this, what with her preoccupation with riot-proofing her tour bus. But her sock-puppet masterpiece has sold 700,000 copies, and as Stephen Colbert wisely observes, the ultimate arbiter of truth is the free market.

Sarah Palin: Obama not acknowledging troops [Politico]

• An email this morning announces that you can win a Remington 770 — or at least the $460 to buy one — in a virtual raffle by donating $20.10 to Kokesh for Congress. “It does not require a majority to prevail,” the email quotes Sam Adams, “but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”
• Meanwhile, Michael Moore collaborator Meghan O’Hara is working on a documentary about the man who made Kokesh a star — “George W. Bush’s military service in the Texas Air National Guard.” And then she’ll jump into the Wayback Machine and release it in 2004, when anybody might have cared.
• We’d rather watch a documentary about why the “Gun Owners of America” opposes healthcare reform: “nothing within the bill would prohibit rabidly anti-gun HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from decreeing that ‘no guns’ is somehow healthier.”
• Peronally alleged gun victim (and personally deluded presidential candidate) Lou Dobbs is “reaching out right now to Latino groups.” His campaign will list Purell as a major expense to ward off leprosy.