Your editor’s sort-of relative teaches at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood! We knew she taught in the Valley but did not know where, exactly — and she is right there, at the heart of the failure of the John McCain Campaign and its weird attempt to put some kind of picture related to Walter Reed Army Hospital behind McCain’s head during his big acceptance speech about his plane crash 40 years ago, even if all most of you saw, on the teevee, was yet another dumb “green screen” behind his bald skull, just waiting for web geeks to fill that vapid void with dancing hobbits, furry porn or Abu Ghraib photographs. Anyway …. MORE »

America laughed again last night as a terrible “green screen” once again appeared behind John McCain, during his big speech at the RNC. Well, the “green” was actually the lawn of a school in North Hollywood, California. And the school is called “Walter Reed Middle School.” And the random idiot assigned the task of picking John McCain’s video background during the biggest speech of his career was apparently told to put a picture of Walter Reed Army Medical Center on the screen, and ineptly googled this utterly random California school picture, instead. And nobody knows what Walter Reed Hospital looks like, anyways, so everybody just assumed it was another one of his mansions. The school is about to release “a statement” damning McCain for inappropriately using the picture of this innocent school. All of this, as Josh Marshall notes, is exactly what happened in the movie Spinal Tap. [Talking Points Memo]

From today’s WashingtonPost.com ….

One great thing about America is we employ our poorest, dumbest and most monstrously oversized men as heavily armed security guards who stand around our government facilities for eight hours at a time just looking for a reason to use that gun. MORE »

Popular tunesmith and cataloger of things that are “ours” Johnny Cougar recently played a show for the patients at Walter Reed hospital. It was, by all accounts, a moving performance. MORE »

* House approves but Senate rejects Iraq funding bill with bonus troop withdrawal date. Mr. War, John McCain, didn’t bother voting FYI. [WP, NYT]
* California jumps on the February 5th primary bandwagon. [LAT, WP, NYT]
* Henry Waxman interviews Valerie Plame live on C-SPAN! [WP]
* Karl Rove’s greasy fingers are way deep in the attorney-firing cookie jar. [NYT]
* Fred Fielding doesn’t like easy jobs — it’s the hard that makes it good. That, and the chance to eat some Democrats for breakfast. [NYT]
* Does the VIP ward at Walter Reed drain resources from the regular injured soldier ward? Is that even a question? [USAT]
* Start stocking up on champagne, and get ready for the citizenship party of the century! [WP]

* Alberto Gonzalez looks down at the flag pin on his lapel and realizes he could’ve saved one more. [WP, NYT, LAT]
* Halliburton gets the hell outta Dodge. [WP, NYT]
* House drops the pointless language about not invading Iran from funding bill. [WSJ]
* Another guy in a green suit gets fired over Walter Reed clusterfuck. [WP, NYT, USAT]
* Nancy Pelosi turns the sprinklers on the hippy dipshits camped outside her house. [NYT]
* Republicans don’t like being “bottoms,” pray to Reagan to deliver them from this fate. [NYT]
* Iraqi firewater will make you crazy. [NYT]

* Jury sheds no tears for Scooter. [WP, NYT]
* And if he pulls up next to President Bush at a red light, it won’t be to ask for Grey Poupon. [LAT]
* Americans still asking Dick Cheney, “Where you at, big dawg?” [NYT]
* Bob Dole’s long experience nipping and tucking combined with Donna Shalala’s ability to crush the spirits of low wage workers will make them the perfect Walter Reed study super-duo. [WP, NYT]
* Fired US Attorneys should count their lucky stars the “threats” they faced weren’t knocked-out kneecaps or cement shoes. [WP, LAT]
* Steny Hoyer so bored with Iraq funding debate he can’t think of anything but those delishus Dunkin Munchkins. [NYT]
* Grassroots group pesters the FCC on transfer of power to “big media.” [WSJ]
* If the Pentagon can’t sell airplanes to Iran then government employees can’t invest there either, it’s only fair. [USAT]

* Bi-partisan “Walter Reed Study Group” soon to be as ignored as the limbless soldiers themselves. [WP, NYT, WSJ, LAT]
* “One conservative lawmaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of angering Democratic leaders, dismissed Murtha’s approach as ‘too cute by half.’” [WP]
* President Bush heads to South America to bring a message that “We care,” as well as, “I ain’t fucking ending up like Slobodan.” [WP, NYT]
* Hillary Clinton: “the cliché of contemporary politics .” [NYT]
* Dick Cheney is handing out lollipops and venous thrombosis, and he’s all out of lollipops. [NYT]
* Will Heather Wilson try to get people fired from the House Ethics Committee for failing to investigate her? [WP]
* Air travel to get even more depressing without a lithium laptop battery to lick. [USAT]

The secretary of the Army got tossed out just now, for losing the war in Iraq not keeping the hospital clean enough, because that’s apparently what the secretary of the Army is supposed to do for this administration. MORE »

* 2 Amy’s may become two story, with an adults-only second floor! [metrocurean]
* “It’s usually liberals calling for broad mandates and conservatives urging local control. But in this case, it’s Democratic Mayor Bill Euille asking for his community to be able to make its own decision, while Republicans in the General Assembly bitterly refuse to give up power and hang on to the statewide ban on smoking bans.” [The Green Miles]
* “This is what I love about the bloggers,” says Laura Sessions Stepp. [why.i.hate.dc]
* Commander of the Army’s Walter Reed Medical Center fired. [A Silent Cacophony]
* “Jesus Christ, even Richard Daley didn’t have a police chief who publicly said that she’d defer to him as to whether or not laws were enforced.” [The DC Universe]