Wonkette

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]

• Sexist Maryland Hurricane Planner Robert Ward says that the trouble with Tropical Storm Hanna is that it is so unpredictable and won’t make up its mind. It will make 18 million cracks in his glass ceiling, just for that. [DC Examiner]
• Near-terrorism — featuring a Jeep Cherokee and “items of concern” — at the Library of Congress. [WTOP]
• More near-terrorism at Target, as 200 shoppers are told to stop shopping and go home following a bomb threat. [DCist]
• Your Redskins lost the big game last night to the Super Bowl champions, the New York Giants. Remember: no Partisan Rancor! [City Paper]
• DC panhandlers will keep bragging about how they were in prison until you buy them weed. [Ezra Klein]

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 »

Here is the highlight of John McCain’s big acceptance speech extravaganza last night: that time Andrea Mitchell was nearly murdered in a sneak balloon attack, and all of her supposed “friends” on the MSNBC coolly mocked her and called her “Boom Boom,” which is code for “old-timey boxing hero cut down in her prime by elitist balloons.” It is always a tragedy, for America, when news anchors have to interact with the physical world. [YouTube]

• 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]

Heart was a late 70s Led Zeppelin cover band, and then one of the band members became a Pacific Northwest Hollywood Liberal Activist. With that sort of a history, it’s no surprise that Nancy Wilson is steamed that the Republicans were playing “Barracuda” all over the place last night to celebrate Sarah Palin, a woman who is only a snaggletoothed fish on the inside. MORE »

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

By the Comics Curmudgeon
When Hillary dropped out of the race a few months ago, many male cartoonists were bereft. Not because they supported her health care policies, you understand, or because they hated and feared hope and change. No, they’re just desperately lonely, and drawing the curves of an ample bosom or shapely behind is as close as they’ll come to a woman’s touch. So when John McCain personally flew to the Ice Planet Hoth to rescue Sarah Palin from her igloo and make her his running mate, the ink-stained classes were all very excited! This week, we bring you the Story of Sarah: In Cartoon Form. MORE »