IMPORTANT GOING ROGUE CONTENT UPDATE LITERARY SPOILER: Newsweek has Meg Stapleton making hilariously ominous threat-y remarks about Steve Schmidt! “Meg Stapleton, Palin’s spokeswoman, responds via e-mail: ‘The Governor will write about all of this in her book. There will be plenty of time to talk about it then.’” HA HA MEG STAPLETON, will there also be time to talk about how Sarah Palin is no longer “The Governor?” UPDATE, SPOILER ALERT #2: No, there will not. [Newsweek/The Gaggle]

John McCain’s former TUFF-TALKING campaign strategist Steve Schmidt—whose job it was to knowingly tell outrageous lies in attempts to try to manipulate an entire nation into electing Sarah Palin, some sort of mystical and feared Loch Ness character who figures prominently in the oral histories of the moose community—has changed his mind. He has changed his mind, ladies and gentleman, about Sarah Palin. MORE »

Last October when vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was busily stoking the fires of racism and Islamophobia across Real America, she uttered this wonderful line about how Barack Obama liked to “pal around with terrorists.” And all the liberals got so mad at her! But really they should have gotten mad at master puppeteers Nicolle Wallace, Rick Davis, or Steve Schmidt, because one or some combination of them came up with those FATEFUL WORDS. MORE »

To be fair, he didn’t say the Republican Party was dead in the South. So, they’ve still got that going for them …. [YouTube]

Steve Schmidt and David Plouffe are both shiftless, do-nothing losers who will never make a dime because they did not spend the requisite four-plus years drinking cheap beers and having awkward sex with people they did not particularly like at “college.” Both of them in fact dropped out of the University of Delaware, in the process sealing their fate as unemployable hobos. And this is why you must stay in school, children! Because otherwise you might end up pursuing a tawdry life in “politics,” which is basically just “prostitution for ugly people.” MORE »

• ALSO, AND ALSO: The whole time Steve Schmidt was running John McCain’s presidential campaign, he was gay! Or at least he wanted gay people to get married! Whatever, same difference, it’s all about wanting humans to have sex with giraffes. Your number’s up, Steve! Time to be EATED by Rush Limbaugh. THIS HAPPENS SOMETIMES: Oh look Sara wrote about this while your male associate editor was asleep “working on other projects.” And she wrote much more and it is probably funnier so HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND. [TPM]

Man, times have changed! These days we only care about the economy and houses and jobs and such utterly boring twattery, whereas just six or seven short months ago there was literally NOTHING in the news except for marvelous McCain campaign premortems showcasing the descent of an idealistic war-hero candidate into madness, confusion, cynical race-baiting, and ineptitude, led over a cliff by a cadre of “savvy” advisers and one attractive Alaskan woman with facial tattoos. And from this swamp of misery emerges one mossy corpse named Steve Schmidt, the bald guru who first convinced McCain of the necessity of “message discipline,” of which McCain later proved utterly incapable. MORE »

• Here is a list of Obama’s best friends and how much they each paid David Plouffe, per hour, for the privilege of performing sexual favors on the two of them. [Ben Smith]
• Hindsight is 20/20, etc.: Americans warned Indians back in October that hotels in Mumbai would probably be attacked. [The Daily Beast]
• Steve Schmidt, the David Axelrod of failure, has high hopes for castrating boy-wonder Bobby Jindal. [The Corner]
• Al Franken is just 73 votes shy of beating Norm Coleman out to be the new Norm Coleman, though according to the former, there are votes that remain to be counted. [HuffPost]
• Other members of the Alaskan Estates-General are wondering why Sarah Palin keeps avoiding doing anything she was elected to do. [Crooks and Liars]

…And/or NOT! Yes, that fancy hyped New York Times Magazine piece about the internals of the McCain campaign is now available online, because of YOU, Wonkette readers, who spammed the shit out of Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard inbox yesterday. Good work. Unfortunately, the piece is kind of bleh, with not nearly as much sexy “late Hillary Clinton campaign”-style adviser-on-adviser slap fights. The overall message, which you may have predicted, is that WALNUTS! is not as good of a politician as Barack Obama, ergo the current “losing” situation in which he finds himself deeply embedded. Nevertheless, let’s run through some highlights. MORE »

Chief McCain strategist Steve Schmidt spoke yesterday to NPR and made a variety of very interesting statements about how close his candidate is to finally putting this Obama guy away. [Hint: Super close.] “We’re proud of the campaign we’ve run, it’s been a positive campaign,” he says. And also, about the media: “We have ‘em just where we want ‘em in this race.” His campaign is “well within striking distance.” And blah blah blah, poor Steve Schmidt, with no hair on his wee bald head, and no prospects for the future. [Politico, NPR]

PBS anchor Gwen Ifill, who will host Thursday’s debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, purportedly broke her ankle “after tripping and falling down stairs at her home last night.” Oh well what a timely “accident,” and what a likely “story,” which sounds nothing like “intimidation.” CAN SOMEONE then, maybe, explain the letter found next to Ifill’s ruined body that read “no forrin polisy gotcha quesschins,” written in virgin goat blood and signed by “Thteve Thchmidt”? [TV Newser]