Wonkette

America has finally learned the steep price it must pay for handing over so much control to the Robots. In the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, hundreds of millions of electronic clocks, cell phones, parking meters, microwaves, video games, air conditioner thermostats, digital cameras, remote-controlled vibrators and nuclear devices automatically switched to “Daylight Savings Time,” even though Congress wantonly switched the “fall back” date to next Sunday in some otherwise unrelated pile of legislation passed in 2005 — and no-one alive today will ever forget the tragic consequences. MORE »

“I don’t care if they call me crazy, the new time will go ahead, let them call me whatever they want,” Chavez said on his weekly TV show. “I’m not to blame. I received a recommendation and said I liked the idea.” [Reuters via Yahoo]

We were convinced it was some deranged “Evangelicals For Mitt” fantasy, but it turns out that the ridiculous “Billy Clinton and some ladies on a collector’s plate” is actually the real, true cover of TIME Magazine this week. And somewhat tweaking the usual habit, this week the European and South Pacific editions also get the stupid fucking feature cover story with the stupid fucking plate cover, while the Asian edition gets the sad face of Japan’s ex-prime minister Shinzo Abe “Lincoln,” who was sent to the crazy house after destroying his government the day after 9/11.

Table of Contents [TIME]
Earlier: WTF, TIME?

You’ll love this special limited edition Franklin Mint commemorative plate of Bill Clinton and a bunch of his womens. Oh wait, those are … uh, they are apparently a few random spouses of people running for president. And Bill, right, because he’s still married to Hillary. Jesus fucking christ, TIME, this is the most insane news magazine cover ever. It’s not on the TIME website (yet) but the article is real and the Evangelicals For Mitt apparently believe it’s real — would they fake an incredibly banal Joe Klein skybox blurb and a thing about 50 Cent wanting to be an actor? Then again, the Evangelicals For Mitt also believes (like Jonah Goldberg) that faxing a document involves sending actual sheets of paper through phone lines.

The Running Mates [TIME]

Somewhere in the Time-Warner art department, several well-paid professionals looked at this, nodded approvingly, maybe exchanged a high-five or two, and signed off on this cover. MORE »

Mark Halperin, former ABC News “Political Director,” is leaving the world of network punditry for the world of still appearing on TV constantly but with a different, more respectable little title on his chyron. That’s right, he’s going to Time. Eric Alterman’s head will explode. MORE »

The point at which we really, really should’ve stopped reading Joe Klein’s Time piece on Rudy Giuliani: MORE »

TIME magazine is cherished by seniors who can’t turn on the computer because they got a virus from the Earthlink modem in 1998 — in other words, “American voters.” But what if TIME was consciously trying to keep the elderly misinformed?

Read the rest of this post, after the jump.

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We’ll take any opportunity to use this TIME photo again, which shows Cheney and his lesser henchmen at the funeral of Don Corleone. MORE »

You ever wonder what David Bradley thought about Andrew Sullivan? Or about David Bradley? Here’s a hint: he loves them both! An operative sent us one of David’s periodic rambling company-wide memos, this one announcing the (here’s the news, by the way) hiring of Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic, and the moving of his blog there from Time’s NEW AND IMPROVED website.

My Colleagues:

Probably lifting the thought from someone else, though I’ve long forgotten, I’ve spent my adult years believing that life is a sine curve of inevitable highs following inevitable lows. What is new to me, in this second career, is that the highs are much higher in journalism and the lows much lower. I had not understood, before, how wide could be the band of emotions.

This afternoon is one of the high highs for me. Andrew Sullivan has accepted James Bennet’s and my offer to join T he Atlantic as Senior Editor. Andrew will publish his blog, The Daily Dish , exclusively on The Atlantic website and contribute longer-form pieces to the magazine. To say this is a lift to our internet work hardly honors what Andrew has accomplished. Ranked in that highest priesthood of American bloggers, Andrew has a monthly following of over two million readers.

The entire crazy letter, including baked bribery, after the jump.

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It’s a bloodbath at Time Inc as everyone who works for them but Joe Klein finds themselves out of work. MORE »

TIME may have put “you” on the cover as “Person of the Year,” but some 200 million of you have abandoned the blogs that were supposed to save us from the Main Stream Media. MORE »

Having lured away the Post’s John Harris and Jim VandeHei (as well as Capital File’s Anne Schroeder and everyone who has ever written for The Hill), Allbritton’s new media Hill newspaper-plus-website (brilliant! Web 2.0!) has now kind of stolen Mike Allen from Time. MORE »

TIME magazine invited some people over to talk about but not actually pick “Person of the Year” or something, and Liz Smith picked up some hot, disgusting gossip at the party. MORE »