Flash: Online News Team Trade-Ups

Mike DeBonis, Washington City Paper’s “Loose Lips,” is moving to the Washington Post. His WCP farewell is here. Jason Cherkis is temporarily pinch-hitting at the LL position. Is Mr. Cherkis sufficiently compulsive to aggregate the Loose Lips Daily morning link-fest? Dunno. He only tweets a dozen times a day ….

Former temp-Washingtonian Alex Pareene is moving from Gawker to Salon.  Pareene (like Zorro, he goes by one name) spent 18 months as editor of Wonkette. Will he turn the snark down at Salon? Can he? Should he?

 

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

McCain Picks Another Beauty Queen!

You see? It is a beauty contest! John McCain, who left his first wife to marry a rodeo queen and former cheerleader, selected former beauty queen Sarah Palin, Alaska’s governor for the past hour or two and 1984 Miss Alaska runner-up, as his vice presidential candidate. 72-year-old Senator McCain, who has had skin cancer from the Arizona sun and other health issues from his war-time experiences, has reversed himself, deciding it is okay after all for an inexperienced person without foreign affairs experience to be president (or a heartbeat away from the elderly president), And Governor Palin has smoked marijuana.

The choice of Sarah Palin a transparent and condescending bid for the alleged swarms of disaffected voters who supported Senator Hillary Clinton. Senator McCain and his team, believing their own propaganda, are betting that disgruntled Clinton voters are too stupid to notice that Governor Palin is a committed anti-abortion-choice and anti-gay-rights candidate, committed to oil drilling in the ANWR preserve. Mr. McCain also believes that the choice of Governor Palin will blind cultural conservatives to his own eleventh-hour conversion from his former pro-choice beliefs. Senator McCain also must believe that Ms. Palin’s NRA Lifetime Membership qualifies her to be commander-in-chief.

Monica Goodling Returns — Wonkette Buys Defibrillators, Oxygen

Blond, wide-eyed, loyal Republican-in-Christ Monica M. Goodling is back in the news, and the Blogosphere is panting. The Regent University alumna and Gonzales-era Justice official has been fingered in a probe by the DOJ Inspector General for violating federal law and Justice Department policy by injecting politics into Justice hiring and firing.

Unconfirmed reports claim this event has triggered deliveries of cardiac defillibrators and oxygen tanks to Wonkette bloggers and key commentators.

Take a deep breath before reading the story, folks. Relax; this won’t be going away any time soon.

Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.

NotionsCapital has no connection to Wonkette, especially since it migrated to WordPress and commenters can’t get back on. Man, what a mess.

Wanted — Vegan Spies

At loose ends since the Kucinich presidential campaign? Eschew animal flesh? Like the Twin Cities? Will you need work after hanging at this summer’s Jam Band festivals? Do those head nods mean “yes?” Then the U.S. Department of Justice has a job for you! Be a Vegan Spy for the FBI!

Philly Populist Punch-out

Yez ready for the big reality show ta-night? Uh-huh, it’s that Democractic debate between Shot-and-a-Beer-Millionaire Hillary and Law Review Gutter-Ball Obama. Jeez. Is this a bad episode of All in the Family, or what?

Did NotionsCapital Inspire Paulistas?

Back on February 2nd, NotionsCapital playfully announced that the Ron Paul Blimp people had used surplus blimp project money to produce an adventure movie, Blimp Battle Warriors, “soon to be at a drive-in or Student Union near you.” On February 14th the Paulista forum Godlike Productions began a thread on this topic. Coincidence?

The plot suggestions on the forum are kind of doctrinaire, conspiracy-focused, and (not to put too fine a point on it) boring-boring-boring. Result: the concept was perfect Wonkette fodder.

Image: detail from the wide-screen masterpiece Blimp Battle Warriors by Mike Licht. Download the original here. Credit to: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Paulistas on the March!

Attention residents of Washington, DC: They’re coming! The Paulistas are on the march! Maybe.

Congressman Dr. Ron Paul, MD, Republican of Texas (who could be Our Next President according to our laws and customs if not the laws of probability) has just rallied his followers to March on Washington.

Boo! Dems Scared of DC?

This is Day Five of the Great Democratic Primary T-Shirt Race and still no winner.

The rules are simple:

My neighbor’s D.C. Primary Election vote will go to the first official, currently declared Democratic Party Presidential Candidate (no write-ins) whose T-shirt (size XL) is received at:

NotionsCapital.com
P.O. Box 15346
Washington, DC 20003

Late T-shirts go in the rag bag and will not be returned; wrong sizes don’t count.

Great DC Democratic T-Shirt Race – Day 2

 

My neighbor, a registered Democrat, decided to test the Democratic presidential candidates. In the upcoming DC Democratic Presidential Primary election, he will vote for the first candidate to send him a T-shirt, size XL.

I was shocked by this since collared shirts look much better, but freedom of sartorial choice makes this country great so I hurled his challenge into the blogosphere.

Shock number two: despite the influential readership of this weblog and coverage of the Great T-Shirt Race in Politico and Wonkette, the P.O. Box is not stuffed with cotton or even cotton-polyester fabric. Not one single T-shirt after two days.

Marc Fisher’s column and blog discuss how the DC region is ignored by presidential candidates.  Here’s more proof.  

Candidates: if you actually have DC campaigns, they don’t believe in you enough to risk a T-shirt.

Again, the rules:

My neighbor’s D.C. Primary Election vote will go to the first official, currently declared Democratic Party Presidential Candidate (no write-ins) whose T-shirt (size XL) is received at:

NotionsCapital.com
P.O. Box 15346
Washington, DC 20003

Late T-shirts go in the rag bag and will not be returned; wrong sizes don’t count.

DC campaigns: win the T-shirt race; get a vote in the primary race. Unless you really don’t care.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Tumble dry.