In the 1990s, the Clinton administration waged a more ardent and aggressive public-relations battle against the tobacco industry than they did against Osama bin Laden. Daily Kos blogger "Bill in Portland, Maine" takes his militaristic whimsey to Winston-Salem, North Carolina today, imagining the invasion and occupation of a cigarette manufacturer:

Overall, thirty two percent of active-duty military personnel smoke, compared with 20 percent of the U.S. population in general.  Because of that, there's a movement afoot inside the Pentagon to ban the use of tobacco because it's killed so many of our troops.  I have another suggestion: let's invade and conquer the facilities of RJ Reynolds.  After all, their WMDs have cost us more in lives and treasure than Saddam ever did.  Plus Saddam didn’t recruit kids with a cartoon camel that thought he was cool but was actually a dick.

This sounds like a bad John Cusack movie. He also blamed Team Bush for increased nicotine addiction:

Here's something else you can lay at the feet of the previous administration.  Thanks to their complete f***-up of the wars in Iraq and Thatotherplaceistan, they turned our combat troops into stressed-out nicotine addicts.

Elsewhere, a Kosmonaut with the byline of "Turkana" is repeating the "uneducated and religious" line of bigotry in an anti-Palin, anti-Peggy Noonan commentary:

Reagan elevated the theocrats, although he didn't aggressively pursue their agenda. Both Bushes tried to use them, and W may even have shared their beliefs, but neither was going to sacrifice their political prospects on issues that weren't widely popular. But Palin would, if given the chance. She's the real deal. The extremists' extremist, and just ignorant enough to believe what to the Noonans was just a game. Palin is an outsider. She is anti-intellectual, both in capacity and temperament. She wasn't born to the party's elite, and she is not their creation. And she can't tell the difference between her party's simplistic propaganda and actual verifiable reality. Because, to her, there is no difference!

The Noonans believed they could play their game, cynically manipulate the people who are uneducated, undereducated, or incapable of being educated, and continue to control both their party and the functions of government. They lost the latter, and now they are losing the former.

(Hat tip: Kathryn Street)

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.