Watch combative, raisin-shaped philosopher-king Rupert Murdoch beg for attention: “[the following was said in an Australian accent, which, according to the Chicago Manual of Style, should be indicated using the 'underline' option]: mumble mumble aye oy yes Glenn Beck was riiiight to call Obama a raycist b’cause sum of the comments Obama mayde were raycist mumble blacks and whites and reds and yellows even though he sayd he wasn’t a raycist.” Yeah it does sound a bit Irish—Wordpress! Anyway the White House will continue to ignore this because there is negative zero reason to do otherwise. [Media Matters]

• Check out the latest hot erotica, Townhalls Gone Wild. Have your FEMA debit card ready! [DailyKos]
• R.I.P., Rupert Murdoch. We hardly knew ye. [Market Watch/Something Awful]
• The doorbell rings. Who could that be? you say to yourself. Oh, it’s a little Girl Scout, selling cookies. “Get lost kid. Already bought 10 boxes of them Thin Mints, from Walmart. And they were hella cheap too, because Walmart isn’t unionized.” The little girl starts to cry. Typical union guilt-trip trickery, you think to yourself. [Jeffrey Goldberg]
• “One could say that the way Obama was able to convince people that he really didn’t adhere to his own previously stated positions is much closer to the example of Adolph Hitler and Mein Kampf than it is to any part of the The Joker’s history.” Uh. We read RedState so you don’t have to. [RedState]
• In a shrewd political maneuver, Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) points out that he has a birth certificate, thus distancing himself from Barack Obama, forever. [TPM]

Bill Kristol’s lifestyle/war pamphlet The Weekly Standard has found a new home! It is much like the old one, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which presumably got tired of losing insane amounts of money each year. (Also, Murdoch didn’t want to get shot by Maryland Nazis.) MORE »

How much will Marcus Brauchli get to leave the Washington Post in a year or two? Nobody knows, yet! But Brauchli is the new WaPo editor and is expected to make dramatic changes, such as “Maybe the paper should not lose so much money” and “Free stickers in every copy!” Welcome to town, Marcus! Nobody else much likes Washington, either, so don’t feel weird about how D.C. is like some fourth-world slum city run by rats, Russian bodyguards and the Park Service Police. [NYT/Fishbowl DC]

*THEY’VE LOST MURDOCH? THEY’VE LOST MURDOCH!:* The New York Post endorsed Barack Obama for the nomination today, and they did so in 2000 Senate race style — by shredding Hillary and Bill Clinton. Don’t the Clintons still have Rupert Murdoch in their entourage? Did we miss some recent News Corp. memo on the Gawker blog announcing a Change? Although Barry probably had this locked when the New York Times endorsed Hillary Clinton. [NY Post]

Dennis Kucinich was this close to winning both the nomination and the presidency when Rupert Murdoch’s evil new Wall Street Journal brazenly brought up that whole UFO incident, which everybody had completely forgotten because it was only a widely reported and heavily mocked part of a nationally televised Democrat debate a few months ago. MORE »

Some alliances are strange, questionable. The one between Hillary Clinton and Rupert Murdoch is one of them. And that oddball alliance did not slip under the radar last weekend while Clinton stumped through Iowa. At one stop, a woman asked Clinton about Murdoch and whether his media conglomerate would put democracy at risk.

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According to a $100-million defamation lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court against Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., former HarperCollins publisher Judith Regan alleges company brass instructed her to lie to federal investigators to protect Rudy Giuliani’s presidential bid, and that she was a victim of a smear campaign helmed by former boyfriend Bernie Kerik. “The smear campaign was necessary to advance News Corp.’s political agenda, which has long centered on protecting Rudy Giuliani’s presidential ambitions,” Regan said in the complaint filed yesterday. MORE »

As the Post invites us to spend the week with Dick Cheney, the New York Times today presents its own lengthy investigation into the doings of a scary powerful old white guy: Rupert Murdoch. MORE »

* Brain study of liberal Democrats in captivity discovers advanced development of the “bleeding heart lobe.” [Warst]
* Alberto Gonzales “secret hiring order” printed in all caps, SO HE WOULDN’T FORGET. [TPM Muckracker]
* Elizabeth Edwards sooo regrets not punching Jay Carney in the face last night. [Swampland]
* Jon Voight says America has broken the honorary 28th amendment and “forgotten about 9/11.” [Newsbusters]
* Rupert Murdoch plans to use awesome power for forces of good? [Grist]
* Hamas’ “Death to America” Mouse has his show canceled. [JPost]
* Is “Lou Dobbs the next Don Imus?” In our fucking dreams. [Stop the ACLU]

• Strategists warn that his stance on treatment of terror suspects might hurt McCain in 2008, the Maverick is unfazed. [WP, LAT]

• False intelligence from Canada led to the abduction and torture of a Muslim-Canadian citizen by the CIA. [WP, NYT]
• Falling gas prices and terror-talk have Bush’s approval rating at 44%, which is a 52-week high. [USAT]
• Al Gore and John Kerry give the speeches about the environment, religion. What year is this? [WP, WP]
• Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and his AA-sponsor Jim Ramstad (R-MN) say Congressional sobriety, like corruption, is bi-partisan. [NYT]
• Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. targeting Mel Gibson’s market share with launch of new Christian film studio “FoxFaith.” [LAT]