We initially pulled the clip because we thought it showed Brewer misreading the poll data as showing a drop in approval of the congressional GOP from 13% to 9% when in fact, according to the on-screen graphic, it showed the reverse—a four-point rise. But it turns out the graphic is wrong—there was a four-point drop relating to Congress, the GOP, and approval. But it's not, as Brewer says, that just 9% of the public approve of the GOP in Congress. It's that 9% of Republicans approve of Congress, down from 13% of Republicans last month.

Big difference. Especially when, according to Gallup, Republicans and Democrats are virtually tied on the "generic ballot" vote for which party people intend to vote for in their congressional elections, with Republicans gaining two percentage points and Democrats dropping six since July.

As you can see, Brewer made the same mistake with the Democratic numbers, misreporting an 18-point drop in Democrats' approval of Congress as an 18-point drop in the public's approval of Democrats in Congress. But you can hear in her voice how happy it makes her to say that Republican approval "slipped into the single digits," and she probably wishes it were true just as much as Fox News producers wished Mark Foley and Mark Sanford were Democrats.

This morning MacNicol posted a story on Mediaite crediting Gawker for prompting a State Dept. investigation into the ArmorGroup security contractors by publishing photos of them acting out a gay porn version ofAnimal House. MacNicol's hilarious (if flattering) headline: "Does the Long Arm of Gawker Reach the State Department?"

Over at MSNBC — where MacNicol's P.R.-man boss Dan Abrams is the ex-boss and current contributor — they were fascinated. "The question that you guys have raised on the web site today," Brewer said to MacNicol, "is whether it took Gawker.com, a popular blog web site—the headline 'Our Embassy in Afghanistan Guarded by Sexually Confused Frat Boys,' along with those pictures—whether it took Gawker posting the pictures to prompt the State Department to take action."

Now, we're happy that we were the first news organization to publish photos of State Department security contractors engaged in homoerotic hijinks and hazing rituals. We're also happy that the State Department is launching an investigation into allegations of a "Lord of the Flies environment" among employees of ArmorGroup North America, the contractor tasked with ensuring the security of State Department facilities and personnel in Kabul. But it's also very strange to speculate that someone in the State Department said, "Oh shit, it's on Gawker now. Investigate!"

We think it's stranger still to assume, as MacNicol did, that we were fed the photos by the Project on Government Oversight, the good-government group that conducted the investigation into ArmorGroup North America, as part of a deliberate media strategy:

What may be the most interesting part of all this is that POGO chose to "provide" Gawker with those pictures early on, when no doubt there are plenty of mainstream organizations who would have been happy to pick up. Someone at POGO knows their new media stuff: Gawker is the online tastemaker and is capable of immediately getting a story out to a large, connected audience, who will pay attention and quickly pass it on.

Ah, if only it were that coordinated. But there's a funny story behind all this, one that's instructive about the way mainstream media organizations approach digital media and the way digital media organizations approach reporting.

Here's how it happened:

1. The Project on Government did an enormous amount of work uncovering a pattern of coercive and unprofessional behavior at ArmorGroup North America, including "extensive interviews with eyewitnesses, and examination of documents, photographs, videos, and emails." POGO's executive director, Danielle Brian, assembled that work into a letter to Hillary Clinton, which she sent along with attachments, photos and videos. Then she posted the letter on the internet.

2. We read it. It mentioned a whole bunch of pictures of gross stuff. We wanted to see the pictures!

3. We called POGO. They are lovely people. Could we see the pictures?

4. Yes! They e-mailed us the pictures.

5. They were gross, so we put them on the internet.

The end. That's how you launch a State Department investigation. What makes this amusing to us is that POGO held a news conference at 10 a.m. yesterday, six hours before we published the photos. Ten or so reporters showed up. Brian walked them through the letter, and then showed them all the pictures — the self-same pictures that we published — on a projector screen. POGO provided CD-ROMs with the photos to reporters who asked for them. After the conference, the AP, Mother Jones (that's how we initially became aware of the story), and a handful of other outlets ran stories, but no one thought to put the pictures of the guys drinking vodka off the other guys' butts online.

There's a lesson here for newspapers, maybe? And popular blog web sites?

(And we need a break from absurd conspiracy theories about devious flacks, too.)

1. HOLY SHIT BARACK OBAMA THINKS HE IS ALLAH!!

Yesterday, on a conference call with rabbis about healthcare, Obama declared that "we are God's partners in matters of life and death," which is evidence that his messianic tendencies have merged with his hatred of the elderly into a potent tonic of cartoonish villainy. He was inspired by a Rosh Hashanah prayer—"On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed / And on Yom Kippur it is sealed / How many shall pass away and how many shall be born / Who shall live and who shall die"—and signed off the call with a hearty "L'shanah tovah," Hebrew for happy holidays (even though Rosh Hashanah's a ways off, but still). Politico's Ben Smith smelled Drudgebait, so he wrote it up without really drawing attention to how insane people would surely interpret the comments. Drudge smelled traffic from insane people, so he linked to it while only subtly drawing attention to how insane people would interpret the comments. Insane people saw the story on Drudge, and went insane: "You know who used to talk like this? Jim Jones and David Koresh." (Interestingly, Smith's source for the Obama quote was a rabbi who was in on the call and "live-Tweeted" it. That rabbi has since deleted all the posts—including the one about being "God's partner"—and apologized for publicizing it.)

2. HOLY SHIT JAKE "THE OCTAGON" TAPPER THINKS BARACK OBAMA IS MALCOLM X!!!!

ABC News' Tapper wrote a blog post yesterday in which he quoted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's spokesman saying, of the healthcare bill, "we are determined to get something done this year by any legislative means necessary." Malcolm X once strung together the words "by any means necessary," so Journalist Jake decided to add a video of Malcolm X to his post just to underscore the point that Barack Obama is a radical Muslim black separatist. We kid! While we've been perfectly happy to mock Tapper in the past for offenses big and small, we think this (crazy) conflation of Malcolm X and the legislative process is motivated more by a misguided attempt on Tapper's part to be cheeky rather than to remind terrified old people that Obama hates "working white people," or to get Drudge's attention. Poor Tapper has been furiously defending himself on Twitter, reminding folks that "President Obama not even mentioned," and the DailyKos says, "Seriously, WTF Jake?"

3. HOLY SHIT SOMEONE THINKS DYLAN RATIGAN SHOULD BE FIRED!!!!!!!!!!

That's right—the president of a group has written an angry letter to MSNBC, and Politico's Michael Calderone has it exclusively! Apparently MSNBC, like Fox News, cut its tape of the guys carrying assault rifles outside Obama's Phoenix town hall to make it look like it was all white guys, when the most prominent gun-toter was in fact black. Which means, according to Greg Gutfeld, that MSNBC is trying to start a "race war." And the president of Americans for Limited Government has written a letter to MSNBC demanding that Ratigan, Contessa Brewer, Touré (!), and "any and all others involved in any way with the fraudulent 'news'" be terminated immediately. Now that we think of it, we've got to get started on our item about the letter we just got from MindY0urOwnBiz demanding that President Obama immediately seek the resignations of "geitner and bernaki." (We don't blame you, Michael, we blame August.)

Brewer seemed to agree with our contention that public figures, especially those who run around correlating a failure to grasp the basics of the English language to a life in the ghetto, should perhaps put a little more effort into their tweets like, you know, making sure that they're in line with the basic tenets of grammar.

Responding on his Twitter account this morning, Newt said the following:








Gingrich's tweets raised an interesting question in our minds—What's a bigger annoyance to a political figure...the internet or his wife?

Finally, Contessa, ever since you eviscerated Sarah Palin's personal goblin John Ziegler on the air last month, we kind of have a staggering crush on you. So call us or DM us on Twitter or something, okay?

When Brewer set the clip up, there was a slight delay, so Brewer was forced to add "...This one." Then, looking at the ruddy mass of green that's supposedly an emerald, she opined "Doesn't look much like a gem, does it." That's when her bitchy friend on the passenger side sniped "I thought you were talking about yourself." All Brewer could say was "Oh that's nice."

Then they stripped and wrestled around the desk for a while, still in their high heels, and, exhausted and sweaty, finally just made out.

Ohh, and a tipster reminds us:

You kind of missed why this is even better than what you realize. Brewer says, "Oh, an 850 pound gem. Nice." A few years ago, Don Imus ripped into her for having a fat ass when she was working on the show and bad mouthed him.