Last year, poor ol’ Johnny Walnuts spent 75 percent of his campaign either changing Sarah Palin’s runny diapers or apologizing to once-famous musicians for using their songs in campaign commercials that nobody watched. One of those musicians was Jackson Browne, who, like John Mellencamp, could have had a brilliant career as a composer of truck commercial jingles, but instead decided to waste his talents on being a liberal. MORE »

How did tenacious Hillary Clinton supporter and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman congratulate Barack Obama’s nomination? He didn’t! “Fervent supporters of Barack Obama like to say that putting him in the White House would transform America,” Krugman opens today’s column. “With all due respect to the candidate, that gets it backward. Mr. Obama is an impressive speaker who has run a brilliant campaign — but if he wins in November, it will be because our country has already been transformed.” Uh oh! It seems we’re dealing with a douchebag here. MORE »

According to a shocking new poll, nobody trusts Hillary Clinton farther than they could throw her and they would not throw her very far. But her husband says that people who are old and wise, like Bill Clinton, find her very trustworthy indeed because they know the value of a candidate who is a poor public speaker. MORE »

The best thing about Hillary Clinton’s imminent return to the White House is that it will give America four to eight more years of thirtysomething, the iconic television show that taught the rest of the world to hate the Baby Boomers. Get ready for another decade of your mom and her friends speculating about why Hillary hasn’t left Bill yet, and did you hear what Linda Bloodworth-Thomason said, and isn’t Fleetwood Mac great. MORE »

The December issue of The Atlantic hits newsstands across the galaxy November 20th, within which Andrew Sullivan has penned his pseudo-hyped first cover story for the magazine since leaving Time earlier this year. Congrats, Andy! And way to be modest and not horribly self-indulgent. For example, check out this nuanced approach to the upcoming election: “It is a war about war–and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama–and Obama alone–offers the possibility of a truce.” Yikes! MORE »

We know it’s not ’till Thursday, but we wanted to beat the rush.

The AP is amazed to learn that our President is greeting his 60th birthday not with deep, suicidal despair, but rather with — wait for it — relative good humor! But that good humor masks — wait for it — “unmistakably wistful notes.” Join us for a birthday think-piece fun-fest, after the jump.

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