The Factor has lost its marble

Bill O'Reilly, who can usually be relied on to at least be a smart dude, said something singularly bizarre on Tuesday's Factor, which he kindly also made his quote of the day:

"Any retreat on Iraq by Obama ... will anger the far left, which is already going nuts. ... Senator Obama now finds himself in very a tough spot. But I know one thing: he can't go against General Petraeus and hope to be elected president."

Setting aside the grammatical errors, this is totally fucking bizarre coming from someone who has reasonably solid credentials as a conservative.

When did David Petraeus become an important political actor? Did he? If he did, why isn't O'Reilly suggesting we start caching weapons and training the militias? Anyway, I thought maybe I'd heard wrong, but this isn't some anomalous fuckup. Fuckup, yes. Anomalous, no. Here's a tidbit from O'Reilly's recap of the show:

"General Petraeus, who is emerging as a national hero, will likely tell the senator that any U.S. pullout has to be okayed by the military."

Oh, really? I thought the military reported to the president, you know, to the commander in chief. Isn't that how our republic is supposed to work?

WTF.