Wonkette

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 »

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]

• McCain, in his big speech last night, vowed to end “partisan rancor.” He made this clear by using the word “fight” 43 times, literally. [New York Times]
• St. Paul police arrested 250 anti-war protestors — filled, presumably, with now-illegal Partisan Rancor — before McCain’s acceptance speech. [St. Paul Star Tribune]
• Bob Woodward’s new book alleges that the US spied on the Iraqi Prime Minister and asserts that the Surge didn’t work. Why would Bob Woodward rather win the election than lose the war? [Washington Post]
• Charles Rangel failed to report the $75k he earned from renting out his $500/night lush Dominican villa. [New York Times]
• Dick Cheney promised Georgia it would someday be included in NATO, and threw Ukraine in there too while he was at it. [Los Angeles Times]
  
• McCain and Obama are tied in the mostly meaningless national polls. [Politico]
  
• Ike and Hanna are not the last of the summer’s terrible hurricanes, in fact, hurricane season might last until October-ish. [Tampa Bay Tribune]

• “PARTY” WITH YOUR EDITORS, IN ST. PAUL: Your editors will be drinking at a bar called The Liffey, right next to a Holiday Inn, right next to the Xcel Energy Center. If you can find your way, we’ll be there, for another hour or more. We’re drinking with this awesome Paultard delegate we’ve been drinking with the last three nights.

• 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.

All we see is some old man with a big green screen behind him. *Hopefully* this isn’t what the McCain people decided would be a good idea, which it wouldn’t, for the second time. Oh God now the screen just got “smoky” green like death! Now it’s blue! Code Pink! COUNTRY FIRST. MORE »