Wonkette

So what’s the deal, is this gal a rotten crook? Will the Obama wolves throw her in the slammer with her corrupt robber friends? Lil’ impeachment action? We don’t know, you’ll have to ask Jeffrey Toobin or his rich lawyer commentator friends. The point: in 25 days, she’ll return to governing a state where everyone hates her slimy guts. [Anchorage Daily News, Report PDF]

READ FASTER, YOU FILTHY BUMS: Hey, remember how the Troopergate report was supposed to come out today, and how it could be grand? Well there’s a slight technical problem in Alaska that’s causing some delay: illiteracy. You know, “not reading good.” These lawmaker fairies on a legislative council in Alaska are meeting to vote on whether or not to release the full 263-page report to the public, and they are taking their goddamn TIME parsing that thing. Surely there’s a Cliff’s Notes or something?? Just hurry, con sarn it. This Friday night news isn’t going to dump itself. UPDATE: “The Legislative Council just voted 12-0 to release the report, excerpt for certain parts they consider confidential.” And now we will wait another seventeen years for reporters to read it. [Anchorage Daily News]

• WALNUTS IS A HERO: Whoa hey John McCain decided to calm the lynch mob for the first time at a rally today: “I want everyone to be respectful. And let’s make sure we are, because that’s the way politics is done in America. I have to tell you, he is a decent person, a person that you do not have to be scared [of] as president of the United States.” (Because someone asked if they should be scared!) Good job and thank you, Walnuts. Watch out though! Now they’s a-coming for you, cuz you just called a terrorist a “decent person.” [The Page]

Well “my friends” it is Friday and this is precisely the sort of headline that will either make people click the clicky to READ MORE or just go “ugh” and vomit quietly in their shoes. Because seriously who wants to know about Ted Stevens’ long love affair with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a man who has built a career defending the veracity and reputations of unreconstructed crooks? MORE »

• GEORGE W. BUSH SAVES STOCK MARKET: The Dow only dropped 128 points today, which is the New Great Depression equivalent of rising 250 trillion points. Credit is still completely inaccessible, permanently, but what the hell do you people want anyway. [AP]

America’s arbitrarily reginal czarina of letterputtingtogether, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, is in a tit-bit of a snit! She refuses to deign either American candidate for Leader as possessing the requisite traits to divert the West’s neo-mercantilist econometric interplay system from almost certain gloom and/or “doom”! Tut tut, what rogues, what Beelzebubs of fiery pagan disposition, are suppressing the hare-like candor we should expect from our two applicants in an epoch of global Money Plague? Noonington knows: ’tis the candidates’ Hired Help — the “political advisers,” as America’s boorish Huns know them — that have poisonedeth the grog of political discourse in the Colonies. Letteth us chance into this seven-day’s issuance of “Declarations.” MORE »

• This little shark in Virginia was immaculately conceived! How long until Baby Shark Jesus replaces Sarah Palin on the GOP ticket, to Appeal To The Base? [WTOP]
• Some geniuses are trying to encourage you to drink responsibly, by making you buy six beers when you only want one. [DCist]
• Hillary Clinton’s new email pyramid scheme is called the “Hotliner.” It’s based out of the Watergate and sounds like it involves sexy eyeliner. [Fishbowl DC]
• Local states Maryland and Virginia rank 10th and 11th, respectively, on Business Week’s list of most terribly mismanaged state budgets. [DC Examiner]
• A certain formed DC Councilman/Pynchon character named “Harold Brazil” was arrested for assaulting someone who worked at a tattoo parlor. [Washington Post]

When asked on a conference call why John McCain hasn’t addressed the 22% drop in the stock market this week, moron campaign manager Rick Davis responded, “There’s very little a candidate for president can say and very little the president can say about what’s happening in the stock markets except hope that they correct themselves.” We’ll grant him that indeed, there is very little a politician or elected leader can do to fix a collapsing world/entire theory of economics. But… “hope that they correct themselves,” WHAAA? Does he realize that the seven most powerful world leaders are meeting this weekend to coordinate a GLOBAL MONEY RESPONSE to our current LOSS OF ALL GLOBAL MONEY? Whatever! Barack Obama is a terrorist, Davis suggests, so everyone just go buy an iPod and some dildos and quitcher bitchin. [Ben Smith]

America’s favorite frienemy Decepticon, Vladimir Putin, was given this wild monster, a “tigress cub,” for his 56th birthday. He “was shown stroking the two- month-old tigress at a meeting with Russian journalists at his residence outside Moscow.” Rowr…?? The gift-givers thought it would be hilarious — a great party joke! — given Putin’s tendency to shoot tigers. Russian irony! Very dark! [Bloomberg]

Regular readers may remember a golden period of mockery over the summer regarding the American Family Association’s “Boycott McDonald’s” initiative, in which a bunch of fat slobs ceased taking their 12 kids to McDonald’s 78 times a week because some vice president gave money to some San Francisco gay cause once. There were funny comments and we laughed, because who were these fucking people just cold validatin’ every stereotype about Bitters? And yet, McDonald’s has now caved in to their demands to remain “neutral” in the “culture wars,” which these fundie idiots think is an actual hot war between Orcs and Dwarves. MORE »

GAYS ALLOWED TO MARRY EACH OTHER IN NEW HEATHEN STATE: Put on your birthday suit, Joe Lieberman, because now you can finally get gay-married to your longtime sexpot, Lindsey Graham! Although he’d have to move to Connecticut! Because that’s where the state Supreme Court today decided that the Gays could get married, just like real humans. Ned Lamont: “This is our Katrina.” [NYT]

What the hell, who made this terrifying thing? It is on Andrew Sullivan’s site, so we will assume Andrew Sullivan made this, in iMovie. [Andrew Sullivan]

By the Comics Curmudgeon
So apparently 60 percent of you think that we are on the verge of a new Great Depression! Hopefully those of your who believe this are preparing yourself for the coming crisis, by putting your money in low-yield, low-risk investments, stocking up on canned food and ammo, and drinking heavily. But there aren’t just practical preparations to be made; you’ve got to get ready aesthetically, too, to understand the common visual language of total social and economic collapse. Get ready for the symbols of our new lives! MORE »

Not that it matters, because the modern Republican fat-ass troglodyte with a sixth-grade education and a dollar-forty in the bank is not exactly spending a lot of time reading books, but talented conservative author and essayist Christopher Buckley is now officially in the tank. He is voting for Barack Obama. (Yes, Christopher B. is the son of William F. Buckley, the founder of both the National Review and mid-20th Century conservative intellectualism, which is 100% dead forever now.) MORE »