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Steve Benen has already covered how the right has picked up their new symbol to mock Barack Obama's energy policy, as if the entirety of Obama's program is to have people keep their tires inflated. Jon Perr points out this isn't a new tactic for them. However, Keith Olbermann goes further, and points out that this strategy (at least amongst the critical thinking in the electorate) may backfire when this advice has been endorsed by GOP Veep shortlister Charlie Crist, California Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, NASCAR and even President Bush's Highway Traffic Safety Department, none of whom could credibly be called in Obama's corner.

Anti-science as the GOP likes to be, I'm sure these facts will go right over their heads:

The study indicates that substantial benefits would accrue if car care facilities systematically offered complimentary tire pressure checks with oil changes including: (i) increased safety by decreasing all crashes and saving more than 100 lives per year, (ii) reduced petroleum consumption by over a billion gallons/year, which would (iia) provide over $4 billion in economic savings for US consumers that could in part be recouped in retail/auto-care facilities, (iib) reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 13.5 million tons and automobile pollution and (iic) enhance national security.

As Obama says, "it's like these guys take pride in being ignorant."

Oh, snap!

Full transcripts below the fold

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If it were up to me, BillO would get gold, silver and bronze for his ridiculous attacks on Al Gore and Netroots Nation. Instead, he only takes home the top two prizes, while Bret Baier takes runner-up.

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BillO the clown voice: "Al Gore now is done. He’s done, OK. He is not a man of respect, he doesn’t have any judgment. The fact that he went to this thing is the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering. It’s the same. No difference. None. OK. He loses all credibility with me. All credibility."

Keith: "Here's a buffoon who works for FOX News which took a photograph of Jacques Steinberg of the New York Times and altered it to enlarge his nose and his ears -- actually copied the propaganda techniques of the 1930's and he's comparing anyone else on the planet to the Nazis?! Check out your bosses offices, Bill. And your mirror, k?"

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The House has sent articles of impeachment against George Bush to the House Judiciary Committee, however Speaker Nancy Pelosi now says that an actual impeachment VOTE isn't on the table. On Wednesday's Countdown, Jonathan Turley gives his expert analysis on this epic fail as well as the latest attempt by the president to obstruct Congressional oversight by claiming executive privilege in the CIA/Plame leak investigation.

As for Bush's executive privilege claims, Turley goes right for the jugular. Attorney General Michael Mukasey all but begged the president not to make him testify about Dick Cheney's role in the Plame case and has ignored a subpoena to appear to testify about the matter before Congress -- which Turley says should prompt Congress to charge him with Inherent Contempt. That's not likely to happen, and as Jonathan points out, Democrats who voted for Mukasey are now getting what they paid for:

"...This is why, when Senators Shumer and Feinstein saved Mukasey's confirmation, this is what they purchased. And, what Congress needs to do, the only thing they can do, is bring back Inherent Contempt and to say they're going to start to exercise contempt on their own, that the deal is off. Attorney General Mukasey has broken a very long standing promise to be a faithful broker, to bring these cases to the grand jury - he won't. And Congress has a right to now say we're going back to doing this stuff ourselves."

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Countdown guest host Rachel Maddow (and again, I ask, why does this woman not have her own show?) and Newsweek's Richard Wolff don't get trapped in the weeds of John McCain's truthiness over his bizarre assertion in an interview that he recited the Steeler offensive line-up when asked about his Vietnamese captors for the names of his squadron when all his past recountings of this story (including his published memoirs and a TV movie based on the same), it was the Packers' line-up. Instead, they discuss whether this compulsive and near constant exploitation of his POW days during his campaign ends up diminishing the experience and inuring his audience to it.

MADDOW: The McCain campaign is claiming that the Steeler story is an honest mistake. One of many, it would seem. So our choices here appear to be a) Sen. McCain's memory is so bad that he can no longer be counted on to remember much of anything; or b) he will say pretty much anything to be President, even pander on the very issue that's supposed to define him: the years he spent in a prisoner of war camp. Which one of those options is politically palatable here?

WOLFF: ...What we're seeing here might be a memory problem, I somehow doubt it. I think this is a... another sign of the exploitation of this compelling story, this compelling piece of John McCain's life story. And the problem is that the more you repeat this stuff-and where you repeat it in error and in excess-the less powerful that becomes. I mean, the reason in 2000 his aides said he wasn't trying to talk about his life story-even when he was---was because they knew that it was somehow precious and to be brought out when he really needed it. The problem about bringing it out every time is that it's no longer powerful.

So, has McCain gone too far pandering out his POW experience? Has he cheapened it so much that he needs to stop talking about it?

This morning, John McCain kicked off a campaign event in Wisconsin, the focus of which “will be women in business and the economic challenges they face.”

It makes sense that McCain would target women voters, who, if polls are any indication, prefer Barack Obama by a fairly strong margin. But I don’t think McCain appreciates just how awkward his outreach to women is going to be.

This week, Carly Fiorina, a leading McCain advisor/surrogate and the Republican National Committee’s “Victory Chairman,” was discussing consumer-driven health insurance when she proposed “a real, live example which I’ve been hearing a lot about from women: There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won’t cover birth-control medication. Those women would like a choice.”

On Wednesday afternoon, a reporter asked McCain if he agrees with his top advisor, and the senator was hopelessly, embarrassingly lost. On MSNBC last night, Rachael Maddow and The Nation’s Chris Hayes highlighted just how big a headache this is becoming for McCain.

Of all the embarrassments McCain has had this week — and there have been many (more on this later) — I thought calling Social Security a “disgrace” would be the one that stuck. But there’s just something hilarious about watching McCain squirm.

Nico Pitney had an important item last night on the political consequences of all of this.

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The hits keep on coming in the never ending list of scandals for the Bush Administration. In today's line up, we have the news that the UN mandate for the US presence in Iraq is expiring at the end of this year. To no one's surprise, the White House wants to continue an indefinite country-to-country commitment with Iraq. However, Prime Minister Maliki has other plans.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday he is negotiating a deal with Washington that will for the first time set a timetable for a withdrawal of foreign forces as part of a framework for a US troop presence into next year.[..]

Iraqi politicians have not only bristled at the duration of any continuing defence pact with the United States, they have also expressed reservations about how many bases Washington should retain, what powers the US military should continue to hold to detain Iraqi civilians, and what immunity US troops should have from US law.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has said that Washington has agreed to one key demand from Baghdad, the scrapping of immunity from prosecution in Iraq of the tens of thousands of foreign security contractors operating in the country.

Timetables for withdrawal? What, does Maliki and the Iraqi government want the terrorists to win? Next up is the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility, which according to a recent investigation by the LA Times has refused to release any information on professional misconduct. However, with all we've learned about the leaking of Valerie Plame's name, the US Attorneys purge, Monica Goodling's hiring practices, not to mention the counsel sought by Mukasey and Gonzales on warrantless wiretapping, torture and terror detainees, does anyone have any doubt that the OPR is up to their gills in complaints?

And finally, there is the ultimate Slow Learner in Chief, who was told by Pres. Clinton and Richard Clarke in no uncertain terms that his biggest concern entering the Oval Office would be al Qaeda. Now it's Bush's turn to get his successor up-to-date on the biggest threats. Guess what his report says?

Now Mr. Bush has weighed in on his successor's big problem: Not Iraq, but Pakistan. Pakistan, home of al Qaeda. Al Qaeda now back to its pre- 9/11 strength, plotting its next attacks, in a Pakistani safe haven that was created in a stunning act of appeasement, approved and defended by President Bush.

Heckuva job, Bushie.

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I've alternated between calling life under the Bush administration as some Carrollian absurdity and an Orwellian nightmare. Turns out that we in the liberal blogosphere aren't the only ones making some literary allusions.

First up in our ever-growing list of scandals is Halliburton subsidiary KBR, who will finally be subject to an investigation and hearing over 13 electrocutions deaths in their facilities in Iraq. Despite being notified that the electrical system was not grounded in the shower area way back in 2004, Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth died in January of this year from the improper grounding of the water pump in his barracks. Maseth's family is suing KBR civilly for their negligence in maintaining the facilities for the Department of Defense.

Next scandal du jour comes from an ex-22 year CIA veteran, suing the Bush adminstration to declassify documents that show that they were deliberately suppressing information that he provided that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Told on five occasions to falsify his report or not to file it at all, the agent, who is fluent in Farsi and Arabic (because those aren't valuable skills in Bush's War on Terror™), was fired, after several attempts to discredit him turned up nothing. Out of curiosity, how many times do we have to have experts tell us the Bush administration is wrong about Iran's nuclear designs before the media stops furthering that narrative?

And finally, we have Huzaifa Parhat, a Chinese-born Muslim who has been detained at Guantanamo for more than six years. The heavily censored judicial review has become public and the Fed's case against Parhat was so flimsy--citing the same source multiple times, the accusations based on "bare and unverifiable" claims that even the judicial panel was compelled to cite Lewis Carroll's nonsensical poem, The Hunting of the Snark:

''We are not persuaded,'' the panel wrote.

"Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact that the government has 'said it thrice' does not make an allegation true.''

Then for the sake of clarity, it disclosed its source:

Through the Looking-Glass author Lewis Carroll's 1876 poem called The Hunting of the Snark, an account of an absurd international voyage by a 10-member crew whose names all begin with `B.'

They include a baker, a beaver, a bellman and a barrister. The ruling went so far as to quote the relevant line, I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.

Despite this slapdown, the Justice Department has not decided how to move forward with Parhat.

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John McCain has flip-flopped on so many subjects that he would feel quite at home in my toddler's tumbling class. Keith Olbermann recounts McCain's flip-floppery on Political reform, Immigration, Gay marriage, Abortion, Nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Military actions against rogue states, Negotiating with Kim Jong Il, Negotiating with Castro, Negotiating with terrorists (acceptable in 2002 when Powell went to Syria. In 2006, McCain said sooner or later we'll talk to Hamas, not appropriate now), Unilateral action against suspected terrorists in Pakistan (Confused leadership with Obama, not with Bush) Warrantless wiretapping, Torturing Detainees, Indefinitely holding detainees, Iraq War, Tax cuts for the rich, Estate tax, Privatizing Social Security, Balanced budget, Windfall profits tax, Offshore drilling, Bush fundraisers, Jerry Falwell, Pastor John Hagee, MLK Jr. holiday, South Africa divestment, the confederate flag, and alternatives to evolution being taught at school

Feeling dizzy yet?

Transcripts below the fold:

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We regularly post segments from Countdown, and normally they deal with serious issues such as FISA, GOP hackery, McCain's flip-floppery and such, but the #1 story on Wednesday's show provided some much needed comic relief that was too good to pass up.

President Bush is always good for plenty of unintended humor, and recently he's been serving up some of his best stinkers to date. VH-1's Christian Finnegan joined Keith Olbermann to talk about Bush's recent awkward moment with Filipino President Gloria Arroyo, the initiative in San Francisco to name a sewage treatment plant after him and an absolutely hilarious video of the president stepping off of his helicopter last Friday in North Carolina, waving desperately at two men (pictured above right) trying to get their attention -- but, to no avail.

Finnegan: "What you can't hear is that the two men in the clips are actually saying -- don't look, don't look, don't look, don't -- awww, I think he saw us. How do you go from being leader of the free world to the guy who THINKS he's invited to your birthday party? You know, like hey, who invited President Bush and why is he playing a Toby Keith cd?"

Jonathan Turley comes on KO once again to blast the umpteenth version of the compromise FISA bill that is being shoved down our throats. This time the Hoyer/FISA rollover bill is attached to the new GI Bill and extending unemployment benefits bill. Please don't forget to chip into our FISA Actblue page so we can take a stand against all atempts at subverting our rights. Anyway, it's being debated today so we'll let you know what happens.

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Turley: They repeatedly tried to cave it in to the White House only to be stopped by civil libertarians and bloggers and each time they would put it on the shelf, wait a few months, they did this before, reintroduced it with Jay Rockefeller's support and then there was another great dust up and they pulled it back. I think they're simply waiting to see if public's interest will wain and we'll see that tomorrow because this bill has no quite literally public value for citizens or civil liberties. It is reverse engineering. Th type of thing the Bush administration is famous for and now the Democrats are doing. That is to change the law to conform to past conduct. It's what any criminal would love to do.

As usual Russ Feingold isn't happy.

"The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the President's illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home.

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