Sarah Palin, the ex-beauty queen turned small-town mayor turned GOP VP Pick, is a goldmine. From the video of her sportscasting days, to all kinds of ridiculous photos, to various and hilarious quotes on topics like the pledge of allegiance ( “If it was good enough for the founding fathers it’s good enough for me” ) to the Vice Presidency ( “Someone needs to tell me what the vice-president does” ) to Iraq. Oh, and then there’s her seeming affiliation with the creepy/secessionist Alaska Independance Party. Oh, and the fact that she’s under investigation for improperly firing state troopers. Oh yeah, wait, she also ran a soft money group for indicted Alaska Senator Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens.

The bottom line: Beneath the bald exploitation of passing over many more qualified GOP women (Hello! Kay Bailey Hutchinson!) and choosing a completely inexperienced and seemingly unvetted yahoo from Alaska, there is something fundamentally McCain about the decision.

McCain, you see, is a gambler. Not a poker player a la Barack Obama. McCain, like many a rich white man with a flashy, impulsive streak and poor judgment, likes to shoot craps

This being said (and you can read more about how McCain is a hardcore gambling addict in this excellent TIME piece from this week), it appears his current gamble is getting dicier and dicier by the day.

Not 72 hours after he named Sarah Palin as his VP pick, the Palins are announcing that their 17 year old daughter Bristol is preggo, and will marry the father in a shotgun wedding, presumably some time before the election.

HOLY CRAP! After the jump, the many reasons why this is significant. more »

…if the world knew just how often this tune ran through its brain:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALHybzqaWwg]

BREAKING: Country legend Willie Nelson has an absolutely crap Myspace page. This is particularly disappointing to me, as I was searching for it to possibly see if I could add “Songbird” from his awesome record of the same name that he put out last year-ish, to my own stupid Myspace page. His backing band on that record is Ryan Adams’ Cardinals, who are so very great on Ryan’s Jacksonville City Nights, btw. Do yourself a favor and get that and Songbird. Now, as for Mr. Nelson’s Myspace page, which is all tricked out to promote some new awful record of his called Gravedigger, it’s a total southern gothic mess (Like Faulkner. Zing, y’all!) The layout is all fucked up, it’s got stupid ads and banners from AT&T of all fucking things, really, it’s embarrassing. Witness the photo above, where Willie seems to be digging a grave for the album itself. Son of a…