Wonkette

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 »

GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. PAUL: “The Republican convention was a neat, quaint operation. Nobody expected anything flashy or fun or interesting, and nobody expected any answer to America’s economic and military collapse beyond an oft-told 40-year-old shaggy dog tale of an old man who crashed a plane into the village he was bombing, back when he was young, and his brave story of personal redemption as his father continued mercilessly killing the Vietnamese children for another five-and-a-half years.” [AOL Political Machine]

Hmm, this sounds kind of familiar if you remember the Keating Five and S&L Collapse: “Nevada regulators have shut down Silver State Bank. It was the 11th failure this year of a federally insured bank. Andrew McCain, son of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, was a member of the bank’s board, but recently stepped down for ‘personal reasons …. ‘” Ha, whatever, McCain Crime Family. Meanwhile, the federal government is about to seize mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [AP via Cryptogon/Wall Street Journal]

If only John McCain had learned about the Internet before he chose Sarah Palin — so much “cyber vetting” could’ve happened. Instead, a bunch of hungover libtard bloggers are using their favorite friend (the Internet) to dig up all kinds of half-ass semi-comical crimes committed by that beloved Alaskan anger-bear, Sarah Palin. MORE »

• OFFICIAL TRIG PALIN BABY CONSPIRACY TIMELINE! Well, sure, let’s have Vanity Fair take a go at this thing. It’s a chart! [Vanity Fair]

We loved you, Minnesota. You were nice. Your convention ran as smooth as a “Tuna Hot Dish,” which is apparently what you eat here, in your secret homes. But now we are at the Airport Service Center, in Concourse E or something, typing, while our phones charge. Newell is already gone — Lindsey Graham was two rows away, in coach! What a fag. Anyways, thanks for following our ridiculous cross-country Heartland Change Convention Tour. We’ll be quiet for a few hours now, as we will all be on terrible planes flying in every direction, 9/11 times Infinity, the end. Oh and Todd Palin’s ex-business partner just filed an emergency motion to seal his divorce records, and it was denied. [Andrew Sullivan]

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]

Here are the current Top Headlines at Bloomberg:

• Payrolls in U.S. Fall More Than Forecast; Jobless Rate at Five-Year High
• Mortgage Foreclosures in U.S. Rise at Fastest Pace in Almost Three Decades
• U.S. Stocks Decline After Unemployment Rate Unexpectedly Increases to 6.1%
• Merrill Lynch Cut to `Sell’ at Goldman; Credit-Market Writedowns May Rise
• Gabelli Says Investors Have Good Reason to Worry About Earnings Next Year
• McCain Vows to Change Washington, ‘Restore’ Republican Party’s Principles

Good Morning, America! Did you love your two weeks of political conventions and soaring (or lame) rhetoric? No? Well, Allah has a treat for you! A million more hurricanes are headed to America, to kill everyone. Hanna will destroy wealthy white coastal regions of Georgia and North Carolina and Florida. [AP, CNN]

• THAT’S ALL, MY FRIENDS: The balloon sausages shall drop from the ceiling, and then it will take five-and-a-half years to get out of here because of the total failure of security.