He knows his wife knows. So he ups and leaves for five days, doesn’t leave anybody in charge of the state, in case there’s an emergency…This is almost like: I don’t give a damn! Country’s going to hell in a handbasket. I just want out of here! … He had just tried to fight the stimulus money coming to South Carolina. He didn’t want any part of it. He lost the battle and said “What the hell? The Federal government is taking over! I want to enjoy life!”

—Rush Limbaugh on Gov. Sanford’s affair, June 25

So everyone is fuming about Limbaugh’s suggestion that the Federal government might actually be responsible for South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s infidelity. But Rush is not the first person to say so, nor is he the most authoritative. Thing is, Sanford blamed it on the Feds right off the bat, when he first admitted to having an affair on live network TV last Wednesday. (more…)

I just saw an article headlined, “Michael Jackson Dead Too Soon at 50.” Dead too soon, you sadists? The more fitting headline, if you have any heart at all, is “Michael Jackson Dead Not a Moment Too Soon”! Because if …

Summer Reading: Banquo’s Ghosts, by Richard Lowry and Keith Korman, Vanguard Press (2009), 352 pages.

You have to feel a little sorry for the two neocons who co-wrote Banquo’s Ghosts. The idea seems simple enough: a Tom Clancy-style …

This article first appeared on Vice’s blog.

Living in an abandoned neighborhood in an exurb way out on the edge of the California desert has its perks. There isn’t much in the way of …

It took me a while to figure out why everybody was nagging me to do a column on the Iranian elections. Everybody seemed to think it was all mysterious and world-shaking. Finally I realized, you’re all het up because every …

This article first appeared on Alternet.org

Everything the real estate industry tells you is a hustle. No industry is more geared toward pumping up the positive and burying anything remotely negative, leaving you — and truth — out in …

Washington acting like a person

Director Tony Scott ought to put up a statue to Denzel Washington in his sculpture garden, then pray to it at least three times a day to express his gratitude for the …

If I was an oligarch and I wanted to buy my spoiled little shit of a son a toy that would make him laugh and laugh for hours, I’d buy him a middle-class American. Because Americans are funny the way all dupes …

He may be dead now, I don’t know. He should have been dead long ago, but these early boomers, born in California, have many lives. From some angles, Alex’s life was clear proof of what spoiled, invincible brats they were, …

I’m supposed to be reviewing The Hangover here, but the problem is I saw it when hung over and can’t remember much of it. That’s what you call “irony.”

(Manhattans and red wine, if you must know.)

I’d heard that this movie …

US Stocks Gain On Report Of Pending Home Sales . . . Pending Home Sales Rise the Most in Over Seven Years . . . Consumer Confidence Spurs Broad Gain . . .

You see the same bullshit headlines …

The latest Pixar film Up is being received as if it were better than the Second Coming. It represents the Pixar team’s effort to be even more lugubrious than in their last animated film—more lugubrious than in their last five …

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is in China today, doing whatever it takes–no matter how shameless and sordid– to make sure that the Chinese don’t pull out of American bonds, which are tanking in value thanks to Geithner’s multi-trillion-dollar gift to …

Is Larry Summers taking kickbacks from the banks he’s bailing out?

Last month, a little-known company where Summers served on the board of directors received a $42 million investment from a group of investors, including three banks that Summers, Obama’s effective “economy czar,” …

I’d pork these fine swine flu mamacitas, the pandemic be damned

MONTERREY, MEXICO — I’ve been meaning to do a dispatch on the Swine Flu ever since the “epidemic” broke out, but I have been too busy working …