**The subject of this video is the kind of thing DC bipartisanship gets you

There is no word in the English language that allows the sun to poke through the clouds, inspires cherubic song and makes lobbyists high five while lording over a beer-joint urinal on in official Washington than "bipartisan". Bipartisan is just so darn cool. It's hip! It's now! It's Rand Paul's talking filibuster and Charlie Krauthammer's sardonic wit and Justice John Robert's dreamy blue eyes all rolled up into one big pig in a blanket!

Or, and I'm just thinking aloud here, perhaps when that word is uttered in Washington there is only once choice to be made: Run.

Because you see, there is actually bipartisanship that makes sense. It is all over the US. It will tell you that over 90 percent of the American public thinks there should be a 3-minute background checks before you purchase a combat weapon that can dismember kindergarten-aged kids, that the minimum wage should surpass that of Heilongjiang Province and that marriage equality is a concept long overdue.

But that is not the bipartisanship that exists in Washington. This brand of bipartisanship is based on Beltway "wisdom" and the status of who happens to be presenting the case. It's the variety that just gave us the 10-year anniversary of the tragedy in Iraq and rewarded Condoleezza Rice of the "smoking gun", "mushroom cloud" and "what does 'Bin Laden determined to attack in US' mean" with a new role as a political analyst on CBS - as if she can figure out day in and day out how to tie her shoes.

That's bipartisanship DC style. It ignored Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Trayvon Martin and finally got around to thinking we have a gun problem after grotesque inaction reached its logical conclusion, with 20 six and seven year olds mowed down like cattle in their classroom. Even so, while there is much support for gun safety measures, there is still some "bipartisan" opposition.

This kind of Washington bipartisanship looks at this war-of-choice that's now estimated to have cost in the trillions (yes, that's with a T), out-of-control health care costs via a crony-capitalism protection racket and a Pentagon so bloated with fat it's a surprise Rush Limbaugh doesn't eat it with a side of his happy pills for dinner, and concludes (behind the leadership of our very own ostensibly Democratic President) "let's rob the old moochers of their earned benefits!"

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Monday night Rachel Maddow expanded on her Friday report about the weird ad running in opposition to Chuck Hagel's nomination. The group running the ad calls themselves "Use Your Mandate" and claims to be a group of liberals -- gay liberals, even -- who are afraid to come out into the light for fear of White House retribution.

Because this White House has been so bitterly retributive, don't you know? When I first heard about it I thought it was bull too, because liberals tend to oppose nominations loudly and without any guise of secrecy. In fact, I can't think of a time where any liberal group I've had contact with has been secretive about who they are and why they're running an ad. That seems to be the province of the US Chamber of Commerce and Koch-funded front groups..

Rachel's instinct seems to be right on the money. As she reports, "Use Your Mandate" used a media buyer in San Diego to place the ad by the name of Del Cielo Media, LLC*. Del Cielo Media is the company name for Sarah Linden, who is the west coast media director for Smart Media Group.

On Smart Media Group's resumé: Official media buyers for the McCain-Palin campaign, Republican National Committee, NRSC, and the US Chamber of Commerce, among others.

DelCielo Media's website is a splash page and a link to a map now, but as Rachel reports, one of Linden's clients is the Emergency Committee for Israel, a relatively new neocon group whose directors include Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer, and Michael Goldfarb. Michael Goldfarb is an advisor to Liz Cheney's neocon message machine, Keep America Safe, where Kristol also serves as a director.

The other firm Rachel mentions is Tusk Strategies. Michael Tusk was Michael Bloomberg's campaign director in 2009 and now has his own New York PR firm. Tusk's client list boasts of relationships with Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst and Education Reform Now, two groups which call themselves liberal but which are not, by any stretch of the imagination, liberal.

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Over the weekend, Dick Cheney became a RINO.

It's true. His sin? Stating the obvious -- that McCain's choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate was a "mistake" because most voters didn't think she was qualified to be president.

Needless to say, this riled the rubes, and everyone from Michelle Malkin to Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds rushed to The Quitter's defense, the latter hilariously arguing that she had a better chance than McCain of beating Obama in the general.

But look at Liz Cheney's words carefully. She's not responding to what her father said -- that most Americans didn't think The Quitter was qualified to be president -- at all. She's just asserting the laughable claim that Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama and Joe Biden, because, well, just because she said so, damnit.

So, let's roll the tape. Did most Americans think Palin was qualified to be president or not?

Sarah Palin's impact on McCain's fortunes will no doubt be long debated, and the results of the exit polls are somewhat mixed. Fully 60% of Americans casting ballots said that Palin is not qualified to be president should it be necessary; 81% of these voters favored Obama.

A few years ago, wingnuts like Liz Cheney would've acknowledged the truth of Dick Cheney's statement, but blamed it on Katie Couric. But the level of feverish delusion in the GOP is such now that they simply ignore the fact that a clear majority of Americans don't think The Quitter was qualified to be president, and declare her unilaterally to be the Most Qualified Candidate Evah.

In other words, Palin's awesome--suck it, Dad!

Here's hoping drink their own Kool-Aid enough to nominate Liz and Sarah in '16.

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The only thing the Obama Administration did [with regard to Osama Bin Laden] was get out of the way. - John Bolton

When I heard Bolton say this I wanted to punch the television set, but after reading Chris Mooney's new book, The Republican Brain, I decided instead to chalk up this bit of intellectually dishonest tripe between Liz Cheney (in for Sean Hannity) and John Bolton to the Fox News mission of feeding the misinformation chain True Republican Believers depend upon to cling to their incorrect beliefs.

Still, it's galling to have them try to not only rewrite the Obama Administration's approach to foreign policy but to claim that torture, or "enhanced interrogation" in Cheneyspeak, was the reason Osama bin Laden was caught and killed.

David Corn's latest book, Showdown, has a detailed look at what factors went into Bin Laden's capture and killing. Here's a summary Corn wrote recently to rebut Karl Rove's lies about it.

On the night of April 28, 2011, Obama held a top-secret meeting with his closest national security aides to discuss how to proceed. The CIA had earlier informed Obama that its analysts had concluded there was a 60 to 80 percent certainty that Bin Laden was in the Abbottabad compound. But the agency had conducted a red team exercise, in which a set of analysts who had not previously worked on this case evaluated the intelligence. This group ended up with lower odds: 40 to 60 percent.

Several of Obama's national security advisers were worried by the red team results. Michael Leiter, the chief of the National Counterterrorism Center, believed the CIA had inflated the case. And when the president went around the horn and asked for recommendations, both Vice President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Bob Gates counseled waiting for more definitive intelligence. Other advisers in the room opted for a missile strike (which would be less risky but could yield a less definitive outcome and cause collateral damage). Leon Panetta, then the CIA chief, and John Brennan, Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, backed the proposed helicopter raid. Such an operation, though, was not supported by a majority of Obama's advisers. Everyone in the room knew that much could wrong with such an operation. (Gates had lived through Black Hawk Down and the failed Desert One rescue attempt during the Iranian hostage crisis during the Carter administration.) And they also realized—though it was not explicitly discussed—that if the Bin Laden mission went bad, it would probably sink Obama's presidency. Nevertheless, the next day, Obama greenlighted the raid.

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Liz Cheney went on Face The Nation with Bob Schieffer and a few other Republican strategists to discuss Rick Perry and Herman Cain's recent troubles, but as usual, she played the part of Lady Vader, a role her mother is quite good at as Wolf Blitzer can attest to. I almost forgot his interview with Mommy Vadar on CNN back in 2006 which surprised him so much because they are such buds that it made him tape a separate segment so he could tell America that he too, is a patriot.

Sunday, Liz made her mom proud by playing the same conservative victim card and insinuated that the media is wasting our time showing us clips of Rick Perry giving a bizarre speech where some people have said he appeared drunk. And then she went there. What do I mean? She proudly stated that George Bush left this country in great financial shape after he left the White House:

BOB SCHIEFFER: What do you think, Liz?

LIZ CHENEY: You know, I think-- again, I find this all pretty frustrating. This country faces huge, huge challenges. And you know, frankly, watching a morning show like this one where first we're talking about Herman Cain allegations and then we're shown a YouTube mash-up of--

BOB SCHIEFFER: We were covering the campaign, Liz.

LIZ CHENEY (Overlapping): Well, but the issues are what matter, Bob. And with all due respect, you know, the American people are out there afraid. They're afraid that the economy is going off a cliff. They're afraid that this President wants higher taxes and more spending and bigger government. And in the midst of all of that, I think that-- that's what we ought to be talking about. You know, last night in Texas, you had Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich have a very substantive exchange about the issues and a very cordial exchange but one that focused on how important it is to deal with the entitlement crisis, how important it is to create an environment where the private sector's actually going to be willing to invest again. How important it is to look at what's happening in Iraq, you know. Barack Obama likes to talk about what he inherited. He inherited a victory in Iraq. He inherited a AAA bond rating. And right now, you've got a situation where, frankly, he is going down the wrong path on all of these issues. And I just got to imagine that people who are watching this morning and, you know, voters all across this country want to know who is going to help put this country back on the right track. Not, you know, who was able to put together a mash-up of, you know, clips out of a speech that Rick Perry gave on YouTube.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, I mean, I take your point. But I would also make the point that we in the media, it is not our job to make the campaign. That is up to the candidates. The candidates determine what the campaign is going to be out.

LIZ CHENEY: But you guys choose what you're going to cover, Bob.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And we show up and cover what's there

Did you see what she did there? She was asked specifically to come on to FTN to discuss the exact issues that she's trying to brush under the carpet and bash the media for doing their job on. See, if the media was running with an obviously horribly edited video that smears the candidate or a person and doesn't bother to verify it's validity then Lady Vadar would have a point, but that's not what happened in this examples. I mean they've done it before for sure. Not only that, but she tries to insinuate that Obama walked into a picnic in Iraq (she forgot to mention Afghanistan) while George Bush won the Iraq war as if it took a couple of weeks, no casualties and something we spent a buck three eighty on. The two wars the Bush administration bought us makes Newt's Tiffany's obsession all but a ripple in the pacific ocean.

Then to top it off, after her father's administration destroyed the world's financial markets which have caused this great recession, she says Bush left Obama with a AAA credit rating to boot! As if that wipes away his massive economic failures.

Now if President Obama gave a speech and it appeared that he was falling down drunk in it, Liz Cheney would be spending millions of dollars with her group Keep America Safe making ads replaying the tape in every state she found air time available. And do I really need to comment on the legitimacy of the Cain's sexual harassment stories?

The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, is leading the defense of Senate Bill 5, Ohio Gov. John Kasich's anti-collective bargaining law passed last year. Ohioans were so upset with the law they launched a million-signature effort to repeal the law that will go to voters in the state on November 8. A "no" vote would repeal the law.

Cheney’s mailers have included phrases like, ““YES on Issue 2 will get POLITICIANS to Do The Right Thing on Spending” And “OBAMA wants us to do things HIS WAY? Yes on Issue 2 is our chance to do things OUR WAY” — convenient talking points that leave out the overall message that many Ohioans are getting a raw deal with Senate Bill 5 and Issue 2 is the public’s chance to wrong a right. The tactless tactic of invoking President Obama, who has literally nothing to do with this matter, displays the desperation of the Right’s effort. In the opinion of some, the bigger wrong that needs corrected is the election of Kasich.

Cheney's ads are notable for their failure to be completely accurate:

Cheney’s group began last month to flood Ohio with deceptive mailings that claim “voting yes on Issue 2 will give our communities the ability to get spending under control without raising taxes.”

A mailing that just went out statewide declared: “We just can’t afford to pay 100 percent of government employee benefits too.”

“In this tough economy,” the mailing continues, “it’s just not fair to ask taxpayers to pay even more for salaries and benefits for government employees.” Voting yes on Issue 2, it says, “means that government employees will make modest contributions to their benefits” by paying “at least 15 percent toward their health insurance coverage” and “just 10 percent toward their own retirement.”

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Man, ABC News seriously loves them some torture.

Because for them, the Bin Laden capture and killing is a triumph of intelligence derived from waterboarding, therefore the question of whether we should continue to torture should very much still be on the table. And who better to confirm that than the poster girl for waterboarding, Liz "Demon Spawn" Cheney.

But as I've written before, there's a logic drop off to their allegations. By all accounts, the use of waterboarding stopped in 2003. The Bush Administration closed down the Bin Laden unit in 2005 and did nothing for the intervening five years. If there was actionable intelligence obtained by waterboarding, why then did they close down the unit hunting for Bin Laden?

What Leon Panetta told the media was that they did receive actionable intelligence from individuals who had been waterboarded in the past but the name of the courier that enabled them to directly track Bin Laden was not known until 2007, after waterboarding allegedly ended. But the media en masse, with their giant hard on for Jack Bauer theatrics, turns that around into Panetta admitting that they got intelligence from waterboarding. Now it is possible that having already experienced waterboarding, the detainees they interrogated were more forthcoming with information, but that begs the question why they weren't more forthcoming earlier.

If Christiane Amanpour wanted to have an intellectually honest discussion of whether torture--and please, give up the "enhanced interrogation techniques" euphemism, it's TORTURE, pure and simple--works, perhaps she should have employed some logic as I have rather than serve up that nice little softball to Liz Cheney, whose only purpose on these shows is to defend her dad's evil and criminal tactics.

AMANPOUR: Liz, does this reignite this debate as to whether these enhanced interrogation techniques work and should be brought back?

CHENEY: I think it does. I think the fact that you clearly have the current CIA director saying that part of the intelligence came from enhanced interrogation, it's important to remember, you know, Chip Burlingame, who was the pilot on American Airlines Flight 77 that flew into the Pentagon, he himself was subjected to these techniques when he went through SERE training.

These are not torture. These are techniques that we know work. That debate is over. It worked. It got the intelligence. It wasn't torture. It was legal.

It seems to me the key question now is, we've got this trove of intelligence, what looks to have been perhaps the biggest trove we've ever been able to get a hold of. If that leads us to other Al Qaida operatives, it's not clear to me that we have any way to effectively interrogate them. We don't have enhanced interrogation anymore. We read people their Miranda rights. We are not detaining people at Guantanamo anymore. We're not detaining people in the secret prison sites. It's not clear to me what the administration will be able to do to get this information.

Shame on ABC News and Christiane Amanpour for not only framing the debate to assume that torture worked, but to then give Liz Cheney a platform to undermine the Obama administration's success where the Bush administration with all their war criminal tactics failed.

On a day (and week) when the news has been less than fun, we want to take some time out to wish our own wonderful VlogFather, John Amato, a very happy birthday!!!

It's a running joke among the staff that John's main squeeze is Liz Cheney. Amato remarks: "Liz and I are going for some sushi and then I'll be taking a tour of the new Haliburton factory...That really gets her going..."

Happy Birthday, John!

You're all invited to leave well-wishing in comments below....

Don't tell anyone! That WAS our own John Amato crashing Chelsea's wedding with his long-time squeeze Liz Cheney!

Open thread below...

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{H/t Heather]

Here's a fact: Right-wing authoritarians will never accept Barack Obama as their president, even if he does everything they demand of him to the jot and tittle. Just watch Liz Cheney on Fox News Sunday today, after Bloody Bill Kristol went so far as to praise Obama for his "clear commitment" to winning the war in Afghanistan:

Chris Wallace: Liz, does Bill Kristol have it right with the appointment of Petraeus and the comments that he made that we showed about no rush for the exits in July of 2011 and late this week -- are you as convinced as Bill is that the president is "all in" in Afghanistan?

Cheney: Ah, I think that Bill is right, that the president did the right thing and that the president deserves credit. I think that he unfortunately had to relieve McChrystal -- I think that McChrystal was a tremendous general and he did tremendous things in Iraq; when the entire story of Iraq is told I think he'll get the credit he deserves there with the special forces. He had to be replaced, however, and Petraeus is the right person for the job. And I do think the president's speech announcing the change was a good speech.

Now, I don't think we know for sure that he's all in. Because Petraeus can't do it alone. And if you don't have the changes in your civilian leadership that you talked about in your interview segment this morning, it will be very difficult to get this done.

It's obvious to everyone on the planet -- except the rabid right -- that Obama is "all in" on military-industrial complex's strategy for "winning" in Afghanistan -- but it's predicated on eventually "winning" (whatever that means) and then getting out. This is what Cheney really is after: like her father, she favors an endless war in Afghanistan, one that can just roll on forever, providing an endless excuse for our military involvement in the Middle East. They're looking out for American hegemony, and too bad about that body count.

Nothing Obama does will ever satisfy the likes of Liz Cheney. Right-wing authoritarians believe above all in bowing and adhering to those in authority -- and the thought of bowing to a Democratic president, liberal or otherwise, as a legitimate president is too much cognitive dissonance for them to handle.