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]

WISDOM IN THE EMAILS: “Wonkette-rs: Just wanted to point out the incredibly flawed logic of the Republican Party staging the final night of their convention — AND the all-important speech by their nominee — on the same night as opening kick-off for the NFL. Not only is football the most popular sport by viewership in the USA, it’s also (supposedly) favored by gun-totin’, red-blooded, all-around good ol’ boys (like Levi Johnston!). — Juan S.” [UPI]

Here’s teevee’s Ben Stein, the funny conservative author and Nixon/Ford speechwriter best known for that game show and yelling at Matthew Broderick in the 1980s. He is not impressed with Sarah Palin. No matter what weird causes Ben Stein supports, he has never been very forgiving of total idiots.

OBVIOUS UPDATE: Ha ha, fucking Bill Kristol. "I do not have time to waste on Bill Kristol’s musings,” Powell told ABC News. “I am not going to the convention. I have made this clear." [ABC News]

Here’s the video of John McCain offering up his wife to the biker crowd yesterday, in South Dakota. It’s the most sexist thing we’ve seen all campaign. Look at how excited John McCain is about serving up his wife for the nudie show, so these mutts can get their greasy paws all over her. He has a little trouble looking her in the eye, hmm? [YouTube]

Here’s a lengthy segment from MSNBC today, where lovely anchor/reporter Andrea Mitchell talks on the telephone to McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, the adult retarded child responsible for that hilarious memo yesterday about Obama’s food choices, excercise regimen and overall popularity everywhere. He’s a twit. He tells Andrea that the McCain campaign has always been positive and not Trivial; it is focused on Important Issues like offshore drilling. Andrea’s like, “you’re an idiot, you stupid idiot” and Rick’s like, “no Barry Obama is an idiot.” The best part is when they talk about peanut butter snacks 12 minutes in. Peanut butter snacks… [MSNBC]

• WAIT, WHAT?: The Washington Post’s masterful Chris Cillizza: “A huge crowd today could be a mixed blessing for Obama. On the one hand, it is a potent symbol of the excitement his candidacy has caused worldwide. On the other, thousands and thousands of cheering Germans may not play well stateside. Does a big crowd work to Obama’s benefit or detriment? Or somewhere in between?” The teevee crowd, of course, shares this sentiment. What do these people mean? That the “benefit” is the image of a large, excited crowd, and the “detriment” is that it’s a large, excited crowd of Nazis? [WP/The Fix]

Dumb dumb dumb, dumb dumb dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb, dumb dumb dumb dumb. That is one “dumb” for each paragraph of Jonah Goldberg’s Los Angeles Times column today. For the record, we did not expect it to be “good,” in the traditional sense — we didn’t expect to read it at all! But 18 paragraphs of unmitigated “dumb” has a strangely magnetic appeal during this lazy news season. So let’s check out Jonah’s column, in which he argues that Obama’s plan to offer educational aid as a reward for national service is somehow both (a) welfare and (b) slavery. Europe, MTV, “the JFK cult,” and Rolling Stone magazine also play bit parts in Jonah’s remarkable paean to the God of Shit. MORE »

People who follow European politics know that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is a crooked wingnut who only stays in power by sending packets of money to every member of parliament. He has been charged and tried for a variety of comical Italian crimes such as bribery of cops and judges, “mafia collusion,” and every known variety of corruption. But he has never been convicted, and this is why the White House shouldn’t have handed out that Berlusconi biography calling him a scumbag “”known for governmental corruption and vice.” [BBC News]

Our pretend buddy and former colleague Will Leitch left the sports blog Deadspin last week. As he invented that popular website and has a reputation for being an agreeable human being — rare for the Internet — we were interested in his parting words. Here are some of them. MORE »