Anybody who says the Associated Press is not the most important wire service with “AP” as its initials just plain hates good journalism. Following up on yesterday’s scorcher about how there were five (5) other governors who did something vaguely weird once, over the course of American state history, today AP headquarters in New York offers up what just might be the most cogent yet blistering assessment of the Mark Sanford “Argentine Firecracker” scandal thus far: Sanford is a Republican governor doing lame, creepy things … just like all those other Republican governors trying to make a name for themselves in the GOP’s final days. MORE »

The Washington press corps has come full circle, everyone! Famous Karl Rove-loving wingnut Ron Fournier, who is somehow the Washington Bureau Chief for the AP, has written crucial News Analysis of the Obama press conference last night. We know it’s “analysis,” you see, because that word is in the headline: “Analysis: Teleprompter telegraphs Obama caution.” MORE »

• GLOBAL WARMING CONSIDERED A PROBLEM: Oh look, Al Gore wrote an AP article about the so-called “climate” under the pseudonym “Seth Borenstein.” Apparently Obama should fix the Earth, but “complicating everything is the worldwide financial meltdown.” The choice of “meltdown” in that sentence was not an accident, you see. [AP]

It’s an annual tradition for the lucky AP photographer assigned to cover George W. Bush’s Turkey Pardoning Ceremony to take the president’s photo at the most awkward possible nanosecond and then order Drudge to rapidly disseminate the winning shot. While the most famous Immature George W. Bush Turkey Pardoning Ceremony AP Photo will always be the one in which the grateful turkey is giving Bush a blowjob, this year’s winner — and the last ever! — has the photographer channeling that hillbilly ass-rape scene from Deliverance, with the aide clampin’ “city boy” down while Bush fixes to take off them britches. [Drudge Report]

We’ll keep this map live up top, all night long, until it’s settled. [AOL News]

No one likes Michelle Obama because she went to Princeton and then glibly took her degree “on the road,” back to Chicago, where she lived off of welfare, like a slob, up to and including this day. And she hates America! Well, Smartypants gave her “critics” — basically, Michelle Malkin and a few other losers — more reason to attack her today when she asked voters not to decide their vote based on, “she’s cute.” And as the AP tells us in an objective news report, those words were part of an evil guerilla conspiracy against Sarah Palin. MMHMM. MORE »

Sorry, was it just yesterday that mean Ken Layne was mocking the AP for being so awful? Correction: Best news source on the planet … any planet. (Thank you tipster donner_froh.) [AP]

It’s the New Associated Press! Less boring facts and whatever, and more shitty, shitty writing like you might find on a Live Journal, for the Retarded. Let’s enjoy some of the dozens of terrible metaphors in today’s AP feature on how John McCain is a shameful old fraud who should be locked in a bag of snakes and dropped down an oil well — no, wait! John McCain is actually like, uh, a person who plays the accordion. Because he’s super old, right?! Uhhh …. MORE »

John McCain’s best friend Ron Fournier, the Washington editor of the Associated Press, has written a nice news analysis about, what else, Sexism. He notes that McCain strategist Steve Schmidt’s dismissal of the “faux media scandal designed to destroy the first female Republican nominee for the vice president of the United States Famous” is only the beginning of a terrible two-month strategy to employ the SEX CARD, because what else is there to play? More hilariously, Fournier quotes famous wartime rat-fisting mayor Rudy Giuliani *calling other people sexist.* You know, Rudy! The one who dumped his second wife in a teevee news conference, because what the fuck. [AP]

FREAK: An important dispatch from the Associated Press: “‘A stack of pancakes to go,’ Obama ordered as he walked from table to table. Not the usual order for fast food. Would he get them in a plastic bag? The pancakes were served to Obama on a plate covered with aluminum foil.” Pancakes to go? Aluminum foil? WHAT AN AWFUL FREAK. [AP]

AP’s NEW D.C. CHIEF HEARTS KARL ROVE: That newish Associated Press Washington bureau chief, Ron Fournier, is making AP copy all dumb and bloggy. Also, he e-mailed this to Karl Rove about Pat Tillman, the anti-Iraq War hero who was slaughtered by his own troops in Afghanistan: “The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight.” [Gawker/TPM Muckraker]