You know what your Wonkette was doing one year ago, exactly? We were in St. Paul, watching the first of Sarah Palin’s national scandals unfold. So fun! Plus, there was a hurricane, to kill more poor and/or black people (it missed, which is how Obama got elected). And it was a year ago tonight that we unveiled the Sarah Palin Fail-o-Meter. Thank the Alaskan Anger Bear God she didn’t wind up as president. (And don’t forget the shitty little dog with an actual tiny boner for McCain!)

• HA HA HA WE MET THIS GUY IN ST. PAUL: This dude Tim was walking around The Liffey telling everybody about his great idea to start a fundraising site for Barack Obama’s brother in Kenya, and Ken kept asking him if Obama’s brother would need an iPhone. “It’s got GSM,” he said, and this Republican tool wandered off in bafflement and disgust. [Help Obama's Brother]

Because it’s Video Day at Wonkette (how did that happen?), let’s watch what happens when the editors of Reason, Utne Reader, your Wonkette writers and friends, and a random funny Ron Paul fanatic from Boston meet again in a terrible Irish pub just steps from the beloved Xcel Center and just moments after John McCain disrespected women by dropping balloon bombs on Andrea Mitchell. That’s right, a few moments of drunken hijinx. MORE »

GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. PAUL: “The Republican convention was a neat, quaint operation. Nobody expected anything flashy or fun or interesting, and nobody expected any answer to America’s economic and military collapse beyond an oft-told 40-year-old shaggy dog tale of an old man who crashed a plane into the village he was bombing, back when he was young, and his brave story of personal redemption as his father continued mercilessly killing the Vietnamese children for another five-and-a-half years.” [AOL Political Machine]

Here is the highlight of John McCain’s big acceptance speech extravaganza last night: that time Andrea Mitchell was nearly murdered in a sneak balloon attack, and all of her supposed “friends” on the MSNBC coolly mocked her and called her “Boom Boom,” which is code for “old-timey boxing hero cut down in her prime by elitist balloons.” It is always a tragedy, for America, when news anchors have to interact with the physical world. [YouTube]

We loved you, Minnesota. You were nice. Your convention ran as smooth as a “Tuna Hot Dish,” which is apparently what you eat here, in your secret homes. But now we are at the Airport Service Center, in Concourse E or something, typing, while our phones charge. Newell is already gone — Lindsey Graham was two rows away, in coach! What a fag. Anyways, thanks for following our ridiculous cross-country Heartland Change Convention Tour. We’ll be quiet for a few hours now, as we will all be on terrible planes flying in every direction, 9/11 times Infinity, the end. Oh and Todd Palin’s ex-business partner just filed an emergency motion to seal his divorce records, and it was denied. [Andrew Sullivan]

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]

Here are the current Top Headlines at Bloomberg:

• Payrolls in U.S. Fall More Than Forecast; Jobless Rate at Five-Year High
• Mortgage Foreclosures in U.S. Rise at Fastest Pace in Almost Three Decades
• U.S. Stocks Decline After Unemployment Rate Unexpectedly Increases to 6.1%
• Merrill Lynch Cut to `Sell’ at Goldman; Credit-Market Writedowns May Rise
• Gabelli Says Investors Have Good Reason to Worry About Earnings Next Year
• McCain Vows to Change Washington, ‘Restore’ Republican Party’s Principles

Good Morning, America! Did you love your two weeks of political conventions and soaring (or lame) rhetoric? No? Well, Allah has a treat for you! A million more hurricanes are headed to America, to kill everyone. Hanna will destroy wealthy white coastal regions of Georgia and North Carolina and Florida. [AP, CNN]

• THAT’S ALL, MY FRIENDS: The balloon sausages shall drop from the ceiling, and then it will take five-and-a-half years to get out of here because of the total failure of security.

All we see is some old man with a big green screen behind him. *Hopefully* this isn’t what the McCain people decided would be a good idea, which it wouldn’t, for the second time. Oh God now the screen just got “smoky” green like death! Now it’s blue! Code Pink! COUNTRY FIRST. MORE »