If you watch MSNBC or follow DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas (Markos) on Twitter, then you know that there is currently an intramural feud between certain standard-bearers of the progressive wing of the Democratic party and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

The heart of this feud appears to lie in America’s epically stupid debate over health care reform, and specifically Kucinich’s opposition to the Senate’s version of the health insurance reform bill that appears to be on track to become law in the next few weeks.

On February 13, 2009, Valentine’s Day Eve, the Senate and the House with enormous bipartisan support only three dissenting Republican votes, passed a historic and ineffective piece of legislation. Today marks the one-year anniversary (or approximate anniversary depending on when you read this) of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Although it was rumored to be an 1100 page bill, the actual page count is inestimable (or almost exactly 2.2 reams). Despite its prodigious girth, at the time of its passage, the bill was considered to be so important that there wasn’t even time to read it before the actual vote. Here’s Minority Leader John Boehner joshing around with his buddies on the House floor about the bill:

Yes, Rachel Maddow has apparently already used my hed (it was “coined” (as if such an extraordinarily clever mashup of politics and Internet memes wouldn’t have been spouted by some Twittering dick sooner or later) by Spencer “attackerman” Ackerman of the Washington Independent).

But let’s talk about Evan Bayh, because I think he and the way he went out says a lot about where we are as a country right now.

Bayh was a “Democratic” senator from Indiana who just announced his retirement. Why? Because Bayh is a delicate flower who can’t stand the fact that the Senate is hard and the left-wing blogs are super-MEAN!!!!!1!

Have you heard about The Wraparound, the hottest dance for your politically-cognizant fancy-pants?

Guess what? You just did!

Here’s the deal: The corporate capture of Washington, D.C. has gotten so bad that left-wingers like online organizer Jane Hamsher and progressive economist Dean Baker are now finding common cause with the likes of Randian moron Grover Norquist and Phyllis “I hate gays” Schlafly. I am seriously not making this up!

I like to keep my nose to the grindstone, my ass to the wall and my ear to the ground. This behavior provides me with keen political insight and severe back pain. Because of my nose, ass and ear connected to varied locations, I sense things. What I sense these days is hatred. I sense this hatred directed at one fellow in particular.

This fellow is Joe Lieberman.

We keep hearing how the threat of filibuster from some senators is forcing Democrats to gut the healthcare bill of any meaningful reform. First the public option bit the dust. Then, Senator Joe Lieberman refused to back a  Medicare-expansion compromise he once supported. Democrats who support the original bill have a majority, but they are “powerless” (we are told) to stand up to moderates like Lieberman because he might … filibuster! Oh no! And we couldn’t have that, could we?

Well I say: Go ahead and let Joe Lieberman stage a filibuster — but it has to be real one. That means he has to keep talking and stay on the senate floor. If he leaves the floor for any reason — for example, to go to the bathroom — the filibuster is over.

Enough of this pearl-clutching over supposed Obama bashing.

It’s just not true that Obama could never be “good enough” for me or my liberal friends and family.

I didn’t expect the world of this guy. But seriously, this?! Is it just me, or does every passing day reveal a man increasingly incompetent and cowed in the face of our military-intelligence complex and healthkleptocracy? Call me naive, but I did expect Obama to keep a few of his campaign promises and display at least a modicum of integrity while in office.

Here are three concrete ways in which Obama could have been “good enough” for me:

“America – we are passing through a time of great trial. And the message that we send in the midst of these storms must be clear: that our cause is just, our resolve unwavering. We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might, and with the commitment to forge an America that is safer, a world that is more secure, and a future that represents not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes.”

Mike Dukakis is probably having a good chuckle, right about now.

After all, it was inconceivable that — after the gaffe he perpetrated by letting Willie Horton go on furloughs — any Governor would be dumb enough to let some hardened criminal back out on the street.

Enter, Mike Huckabee.

Brilliant news from upper New York state, where the losingest loser in the short history of loserish Tea Party patriotism has declared himself perhaps not such a loser after all, pending the counting of actual, you know, votes.

Yes, Doug “The Dud” Hoffman has done re-thunk his previously announced concession in the NY-23 race, deciding that maybe he’d like to be the winner instead. He thinks it is possible, based on uncounted absentee and military ballots that he must have forgotten about when he previously threw in the towel and admitted to being a loser.

Hello. It’s raining here again – big drops – but that’s got little or nothing to do with what happened last night, voting-wise. Yes, some parts of America (and maybe Canada, I haven’t checked) exercised their democratic right to press a button or make a cross for the human they best think mirrors their own world-view. I’m too far away and too busy sleeping with my kittehs to pay much attention, but as far as I can make out, you can’t marry your gay partner in Maine any more, but you can marry your marijuana plant, as long as both of you don’t have a penis or vagina, of course.

You know, of course, that Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman wants to keep you from getting health care, right?

Is he a “Craven Stuffcheeks,” or what?

You might also know that Maine senator Olympia Snowe voted for a version of a health care bill that she didn’t really like and also that Snowe voted for it because she is a senatorial back-bencher and spotlight-craving whore.

Yes. I called Olympia Snowe a “whore.” And no, I’m not going to apologize for it.

I’m also calling her “Vispish Applebottom.”

Wow! The Gray Lady and I really don’t get along.

First, there was my summer run-in with the American paper of record’s Gail Collins, who chirped that “American influence is rising abroad, and at home nobody in the White House appears to be plotting to undermine our civil rights on a daily basis.”

Needless to say, Collins’ stupid and New York media yuppie assessment of the wretched Obama administration was and remains demonstrably false.

And now there’s my current contretemps with Roger Cohen, the idiot warmonger who wrote this column today about how Obama is ‘wavering’ on sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Here’s what I wrote to Roger Cohen in response:

GOP INTERVIEWER: Hello. Name?
OBAMA: Barack Obama.
GOP: It says on your resume here that your name is Barack HUSSEIN Obama.
OBAMA: I guess it is.
GOP: You were born in Hawaii?
OBAMA: Yes.
GOP: You don’t look Hawaiian.
OBAMA: What’s that supposed to mean?
GOP: Well, you don’t. What are your political leanings?
OBAMA: I’m not a Republican, but I don’t believe in partisan -
GOP: That’s an “X” against you, if I’ve ever heard one.
OBAMA: Okay.
GOP: Says here you’re President?
OBAMA: Yes.
GOP: Of America?
OBAMA: Yes.
GOP: South America? Like, Brazil or something?
OBAMA: No.
GOP: Central America?
OBAMA: The United States, sir. Of America.
GOP: No fuckin’ way.
OBAMA: Why do you say that?
GOP: Because, you know, you’re not, uh, how should I say this?
OBAMA: Because I’m not Hawaiian?
GOP: Yes. Good save.
OBAMA: Mmm-hmm.
GOP: Says here under “professional achievements” that you won a Nobel fuckin’ Peace Prize? Now why the Hell would you put THAT in?
OBAMA: Um, because it’s a major achievement, especially considering what the image of our country has been like among the international community for the past eight years.
GOP: You mean YOUR country, Brazil?
OBAMA: No.
GOP: Well, I don’t know what the Hell you’re talkin’ about, then.
OBAMA [gets up]: Thank you for being a complete jackass, Glenn.
GOP: That’s Mr. Beck to you.

FIN.

(Apologies if you’ve seen this before.)

In a genuinely explosive development this morning, Socialist Muslim enclave the “Nobel Committee” awarded Kenyan interloper and birth certificate forger du jour “Barack” Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee said it gave him the award for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples. And for not being George W. Bush.”