Mormon crickets: If you live, say, anywhere in the American West, you know these horrifying animals as a persistent cannibal scourge that can form a phalanx a mile across and two miles long, marching through the desert in search of food. If you are a senator “from” Arizona who grew up in Virginia and spent most of his life in Washington D.C., they are a punch line to a terrible joke. MORE »

Weren’t we just talking about Larry King? Yes we were! Well, the “king of all media” has some very special guests tonight, straight from the meth/moose/Taco Bell capital of the world, Wasilla. The singular Levi and Mercede Johnston will sit down this evening with Hollywood’s favorite death muppet, and dope-dealin’ mom Sherry Johnston is coming along for the ride. (The ride will be in an actual pickup truck, driven from Alaska. Sherry will be shotgun. Mercede likes to be closest to Levi, in the night.) MORE »

• Obama ‘N Friends have themselves a fleet of hybrid Fords. Even David Plouffe, the greatest threat facing American inboxes, gets something called a Fusion Hybrid. [AMERICAblog]
• In exchange for paying off Mark Penn’s formidable annual adult website membership dues, Hillary Clinton will allow you to rent any of the following: Bill Clinton, Paul Begala, James Carville. [Gawker]
• American President Rush Limbaugh told Internet President Matt Drudge to “disappear”—for reasons of self-preservation, presumably, but the self-preservation of whom? Verily, a mystery! [Daily Intel]
• Actual Esquire centerfold Cass Sunstein can now add another bullet-point to his resume: head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. [Ezra Klein]
• John McCain, the famed McCain Senatorette, is demanding the White House personally apologize to him for communistically exploring the psychological state of soldiers returning from Afghanistan. [CNN Political Ticker]

Oh poor John McCain! He tried not to be racist for a little while in 2007 during the immigration reform fight, but then that didn’t work, so he abandoned it and won the Republican nomination after all, but then that didn’t work either, and since a wingnut never forgets, he will now miserably lose his 2010 Senate primary to this guy who runs around shooting Mexicans. MORE »

WHY OLD PEOPLE LOVE THE TWITTERS: “To a person with short-term memory loss, Twitter serves a vital function: every time the user announces, ‘Going across the street to get ice cream,’ they notify not only their 30,000-odd ‘followers,’ but they also establish a record for themselves so that if they end up across the street wondering what on earth they’re doing staring at a pint of Haagen-Dazs, they need only check their Twitter status for the magical answer. And then they can ‘tweet’ about their ice cream, which is important!” [Sara's NBC Gig]

• ALSO, AND ALSO: The whole time Steve Schmidt was running John McCain’s presidential campaign, he was gay! Or at least he wanted gay people to get married! Whatever, same difference, it’s all about wanting humans to have sex with giraffes. Your number’s up, Steve! Time to be EATED by Rush Limbaugh. THIS HAPPENS SOMETIMES: Oh look Sara wrote about this while your male associate editor was asleep “working on other projects.” And she wrote much more and it is probably funnier so HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND. [TPM]

Here is a Hot Scoop via our nation’s secret spy network, CSPAN: one of the main guys from John McCain’s VP vetting committee spilled salacious details on how and why Joe Lieberman did not get to be John McCain’s Sarah Palin. MORE »

Man, times have changed! These days we only care about the economy and houses and jobs and such utterly boring twattery, whereas just six or seven short months ago there was literally NOTHING in the news except for marvelous McCain campaign premortems showcasing the descent of an idealistic war-hero candidate into madness, confusion, cynical race-baiting, and ineptitude, led over a cliff by a cadre of “savvy” advisers and one attractive Alaskan woman with facial tattoos. And from this swamp of misery emerges one mossy corpse named Steve Schmidt, the bald guru who first convinced McCain of the necessity of “message discipline,” of which McCain later proved utterly incapable. MORE »

Now that the cold, snowy weather is over and Washingtonians can just parade around in the freezing drizzle, everybody from Jill Biden to a certain former presidential candidate are out doing “normal people” things such as shopping and driving. And and and! Some of these brave souls have even been spotted in other cities, such as exotic and far-flung Manhattan.

Have you seen some person where you’re like, “Hey that is not a bad-looking person for their age, I wonder what is wrong with them on the inside,” and then you figure out they’re on TV all the time or they’re married to a politician? Well, there’s your answer. Email your story to tips@wonkette.com with subject line ‘Wonk’d’ to share your disappointment and misery. MORE »

The super-dumb full-of-shit jingoistic Magic 8-Ball known as “John McCain’s twatbot” crapped this out today: “America has been and remains the greatest force for good in history.” Eric Spiegelman wonders why John McCain is pissing on Christ’s grave. [Bus Your Own Tray]

Well, this is uncomfortable. Here’s Walnuts having a “senior moment” as he mumbles happily (or sadly?) about how the House and Senate will surely pass Obama’s Democratic $3.6 Trillion Welfare Budget today. [YouTube/Associated Press]