SHUT UP, CLOWN-MOOSE: Erratic wingnut Sarah Palin is ready to rehabilitate her comical image! Only 23% of Americans approve of this fame-crazed snowbilly grifter — Hi, Republican base! — so it’s time for Palin to “write” an op-ed for the important neo-con pamphlet The Washington Post. It’s an unfunny collection of super-short paragraphs about how Obama will destroy America by, uh, let’s see, how about that cap-and-trade stuff nobody in this country understands, even though it might help the Earth, as far as the Melting? Thank Allah the entire WaPo copy desk spent a few days on this thing, so it wouldn’t read like Sarah’s late-night dumbass Twitters. [Washington Post]

Looks like New York Times columnist and globe-trotter Nicholas Kristof is feeling kind of shitty about being so rich and the Africans being so poor. It is a noble (banal) sentiment, but in our limited experience, the spiritual poverty of the wealthy may suck but at least you aren’t fucking hungry all the time, and you can go to the doctor and get some mood pills, and you’re probably not going to die before your twentieth birthday, of AIDS. [Twitter]

ALL NEWSPAPERS FAILING: Tribune Co. went ahead and declared bankruptcy, which is surely good news for the battered half-dead Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. The New York Times is scheduled to go bust later this week, probably. The prognosis for print newspapers has been pretty grim since the 1980s, but the specific financial collapse of Tribune Co. and the NYT is, like everything, the fault of the real-estate bubble and credit swaps and whatever. [AP/WSJ/Gawker]

JOHN EDWARDS WAS GROSS TO MAUREEN DOWD, TOO: “Back in 2002, Edwards sent me a Ken doll dressed in bathing trunks, Rio de Janeiro Ken, with a teasing note, because he didn’t like my reference to him as a Ken doll in a column. In retrospect, the comparison was not fair — to Ken.” [New York Times]

MANY WORDS WRITTEN ABOUT RUSH LIMBAUGH: The NYT Magazine has posted Zev Chafets’ very long and still pretty interesting Sunday cover story on the AM talk-radio entertainer. Conclusion: Rush is a super-rich weirdo and clever broadcaster who annoys a lot of people and pleases a lot of other people, the end. [NYT Magazine]

New first lady Michelle Obama is a young, stylish, beautiful and successful corporate attorney from humble south-side-of-Chicago beginnings. In other words, she’s just like ancient yankee matron aristocrat Barbara Bush. MORE »

Did you know John McCain was a hard-livin’ playboy and financial criminal back in the Jazz Age? Of course, because John McCain’s entire campaign is based on rumors of his physical attractiveness back in the 1920s. But now that he’s a tortured, crazy old man whose only economic experience was personally destroying the nation’s Savings & Loan institutions in the 1980s, all he wants to do is imprison all Americans in a terrible place where they can’t drink and fuck around and leave their crippled wives for hot millionaire gals, the end. [New York Times]

So Bill Kristol forms an entire argument on Barack Obama lying about attending church services on July 22, 2007, and then it’s proven that Barack was not lying at all — he wasn’t there on July 22, 2007. Kristol has updated his column with this correction now: “In this column, I cite a report that Sen. Obama had attended services at Trinity Church on July 22, 2007. The Obama campaign has provided information showing that Sen. Obama did not attend Trinity that day. I regret the error.” Ha ha ha, he is always so wrong about everything he tries to do. Laugh at the person who is wrong all the time! Yes, laugh at him; he will not save you when the end draws near. [NYT]

New York Times “lightning rod conservative” columnist Bill Kristol wrote this morning that Barack Obama is a fraud. Like most things Bill Kristol writes about, this is old by four news cycles. He lies about which church services he attended once, in the past! And his preacher is like a terrorist or sump’m! After a wry introduction involving Ben Affleck and a nightclub, the always deft Kristol dispels any notions that America’s Youth may be “Generation Obama.” Instead, they are the “9/11 generation.” MORE »

Hey look, John McCain had an acid flashback to his days in the Mexican Hanoi Hilton and yelled at poor human condition-chronicler Elisabeth Bumiller of the NYT. Why? Because she asked about his conversation with John Kerry in 2004 to become his running mate. About halfway through the video, you can hear Cindy McCain throw a gin tumbler at the plane’s wall, just before McCain’s aides were able to feed her her Xanax/Oxycontin cocktail coated in strawberry cream cheese. [via The Caucus]

Have you seen how many articles have been in the New York Times these past few months? Thousands, for Christ’s sake! What is wrong with the Times when they won’t explain the process behind each one? Fortunately we have the New Republic’s Gabriel Sherman, who first told us why the Times printed a story about John McCain and now explains how the newspaper made a political endorsement, of Hillary Clinton. Why isn’t the Times more transparent? Who cares? Gabriel Sherman can fill us in on all the secret editorial “decisions.” MORE »