So a bunch of fancy world leaders gathered at Davos to discuss the “world economy,” such as it is, and generally be lame together this year. The “headliners” were such sexy globe-trotting humanitarian starlets as Vladimir Putin and Wen Jiabao. Putin said something mean to Michael Dell, because that is something Putin loves doing: publicly humiliating dopey Americans. MORE »

A Wonkette publishing operative has sent us this leaked letter (.PDF) from the Workman Publishing Co., publishers of the new book “Is This Thing On?”: A Computer Handbook for Late Bloomers, Technophobes, and the Kicking & Screaming, to McCain deputy e-campaign director Mark Soohoo. The P.R. person writes that folks are being unfair with McCain by calling him “computer illiterate,” and appears to think there’s a chance Walnuts might accept an offer to do a “special one-on-one training session” with the book’s author. Our favorite line: “Mr. McCain mentioned that he liked reading Politico.com, so he is certainly no novice.” [Letter (.PDF)]

Oh come now, will everyone please stop pickin’ on poor John McCain for his limited knowledge of the future techmologies? This is something that irks political writers on the Internet to a strange degree (probably because it means McCain cannot give them page views.) Even McCain’s best friend Jon Chait of The New Republic has been calling him “President Grampa Simpson,” which is Ageist. While many of us are more concerned about McCain for other reasons — the fact that he is solidly to the right of George W. Bush on foreign policy, for example — we understand how problematic it would be to have a president who uses Yahoo! instead of Google. And yet it’s still hilarious whenever McCain tries to defend his technological know-how to a crowd of nerds, as he did yesterday in liberal San Francisco. MORE »

Here is a video clip of John McCain declaring that he graduated fifth from the bottom of his class in the Naval Academy. This is supposed to make all you elitists turn purple with rage that such a terrible slacker would ever dare to run for president, when in fact it just shows that John McCain was cool, once: too cool for school, in fact, in the years before school was officially invented. The bit about his wife having to turn on his computer for him is just embarrassing, though. [YouTube via AmericaBlog]

It’s time to stop with all this “John McCain is from the 18th Century” nonsense, because the GOP nominee-to-be has now seen a computer and is quickly catching up with all the exciting technological developments of the past 45 years. MORE »

Think of something useless and trendy — something that wastes your time while adding absolutely nothing to your life or work while simultaneously exposing your identity and private information and whatever you’re doing at the moment to a world of sinister strangers who only want to steal your ID and rape you. Right, we are talking about Facebook, which is a sort of web-based rolodex that anybody can look at, on the Internet. IT’S A WEB 2.7 SENSATION OMFG IT’S ON THE COVER OF NEWSWEEK!!1!

Now, think about the most inappropriate possible industry to combine with a Facebook-style application. If you guessed “U.S. intelligence services” then go ahead and appoint yourself “spy czar” or whatever because you are right. And we are fucked. MORE »

It’s a good thing all the Iraq war plans are totally useless — otherwise our Determined Enemies might learn something from all the supposedly Top Secret documents just sitting on web servers that anybody can access. MORE »

Following this week’s tragic revelation of 800 cyber-attacks on the the Homeland Security department, evil computer monsters have now attacked the Pentagon’s computer networks. Some 1,500 PCs at DoD were shut down during the latest “penetration of the system,” in the romantic wording of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. MORE »

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• Racism Week started with a bang as George Allen decided there aren’t enough good derogatory terms for brown skinned people and blurted out “Macaca,” in reference to an opponent’s campaign staffer. We spent some time trying to figure out what the fuck that even meant, but as usual it’s Wonkette readers who have the final say.

• They don’t have to invent new racist words in Florida, as congressional candidate Tramm Hudson demonstrates with his “blacks don’t know how to swim” story.
• In the business world, unlike politics, giving an interview where you claim, “Jews, Arabs, and Koreans” rip off black shoppers will actually get you canned.
• Only a few more months of Katherine Harris’s antics are left, so get it while you can.
• Duke Cunningham has fallen far. So far, in fact, that he’s begun taking criminal pointers from The Big Lebowski.
• Even at the top, journalism is about selfless sacrifice in the name of news.
• Local basketball hero Lonny Baxter “practices shooting” in DC, ends up in the slammer.
• Yes, Fidel Castro is still alive, and he’s as fashionable as ever.
• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad started blogging this week. So far, posts are what you’d expect. “Death to Israel” and “When is Vista really coming out?” kind of stuff.

Dearest Readers, MORE »