Bonus Quote of the Day

"Those who are impotent and limp and gutless and they go on their anonymous, sources that are anonymous, and impotent, limp and gutless reporters take anonymous sources and cite them as being factual references. It just slays me because it's so absolutely clear what the state of yellow journalism is today that they would take these anonymous sources as fact."

-- Sarah Palin responding exactly the way you knew she would to a new Vanity Fair article that portrays her as a pathological liar who's more than a little unhinged

I've read this over several times and aside from the juvenile insult aimed what Palin probably truly believes is the author of the article's flaccid penis, I can't for the fucking life of me figure out what the hell she's talking about.

By the way, this received "Quote of the Day" status only because I couldn't think of a way to transcribe Jan Brewer going, "Uh.. uh... and... um... uh...budget," for a full minute.

Folks, I give you the she-wolves of the modern Republican party. Move over Mensa.

Brewer, Idiot

This is so damn uncomfortable, it's like watching Travis Bickle on the pay phone trying to apologize to Betsy for taking her to a porn movie.

Quote of the Day

"Glenn Beck's rally was large, vague, moist and undirected -- the Waterworld of white self-pity"

-- Christopher Hitchens in Slate

My God, how I'm going to miss this guy if he doesn't survive his current battle with cancer. It will be a smart people tragedy like nothing we've seen in years.

Hitchens goes on to make a terrific point about how Beck's seemingly unfathomable appropriation of MLK's legacy and the civil rights movement in general -- which so many people rightly mocked over the past few weeks -- is really nothing more than an attempt to provide confirmation to the doughy, Middle-American doofs who worship him that, as whites, they're the new minority.

Listening Post

For more than three-quarters of my life, this has been one of my absolute favorite songs. It features an instantly identifiable sax line and one of the coolest damn guitar solos ever recorded.

From 1978, here's Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street.

Karmageddon

And here I thought it was just a joke to say that Michael Bay would have to rescue a bucket full of puppies from drowning in a river for me to like him.

WWTDD: Michael Bay Offers $50,000 Reward for Woman Filmed Throwing Puppies Into River/9.1.10

Well, this is a start.

Now all he has to do is build a time machine, go back to 1942 and create a list of Jews he saves from the Nazi gas chambers and then maybe it'll make up for the last Transformers movie. The guy who shot the squealing puppy death video didn't inflict the kind of trauma on my brain that Bay did with that thing.

Quote of the Day

"He just gave them the best political gift they never deserved."

-- Rachel Maddow on President Obama's not simply conciliatory but almost congratulatory tone toward the previous administration on the subject of the war in Iraq during last night's address to the nation

Well, it's official: They got away with it.

I'm generally reluctant to hammer Obama too hard because he's already getting it from all sides these days, but as of last night the entirely pointless folly in Iraq that killed thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, led to the rise of an unopposed Iran, fomented hatred of the U.S abroad, and helped to sink our economy to the tune of billions of wasted taxpayer dollars has been relegated to nothing more than a controversial decision that the patriots in the White House were perfectly entitled to make -- rather than the crime of the century, which is what it really was.

That's the beauty of the Bush era: It fucked things up so monumentally that we have no choice but to concentrate on fixing the damage rather than tying ourselves up going after the assholes who handed it to us on a silver, shit-piled platter.

Listening Post

They're one of the coolest yet most underappreciated British rock bands of the 80s, and they continue to make damn good music to this day (particularly frontman Nick Marsh, whose solo album from a few years back was spectacular).

Here's two from Flesh for Lulu.

Decline and Fall and Idol.