Gossip

Gawker has a hilarious post about the National Enquirer's scandal digging article on Sarah Palin's alleged tryst with her husband's former business associate. The Money Quote:

The Enquirer says Sarah Palin told friends the relationship was never "consummated" but you know how they get around that in Islam.

HAWT!

Even hotter : The picture they of Sarah the National Enquirer put up with the post about the paper's article and Gawker's observation that Sarah likes her men to look alike.

Both made me laugh out loud.

After the John Edwards' baby mamma scandal, I think it is best to take seriously any National Enquirer dirt digging of politicians. And grock knows I should have known they were saying the truth about Edwards.

Albeit this most awesomest moment in TV history, it seems Anderson Cooper's boo is not Donna.

BTW : Yes this is an excuse to flog that video again because I LOVS IT!

I'd like to you take a moment to track the progression of how journalists like to muck around with the political process without being accountable to anybody but their editorial boards.

Yesterday I was happy to go to bat for John McCain, thanks to the New York Times incredibly crass hit job. Well, today the Managing Editor of the Seattle Post Intelligencer has this to say about the NY Times' hatchet job:

Admitting that Keller was in a better position to vet the sourcing and facts than I am as, basically, a reader, let's assume that every source is solid and every fact attributed in the story to an anonymous source is true. You're still dealing with a possible appearance of impropriety, eight years ago, that is certainly unproven and probably unprovable.

Where is the solid evidence of this lobbyist improperly influencing (or bedding) McCain? I didn't see it in the half-dozen times I read the story. In paragraphs fifty-eight through sixty-one of the sixty-five-paragraph story, the Times points out two matters in which McCain took actions favorable to the lobbyist's clients -- that were also clearly consistent with his previously stated positions.

That's pretty thin beer.

And the "it must be so because it's in The New York Times" argument will never hold much water after Judith Miller and Ahmed Chalabi got done perforating it.

2008 started "off" to say the least, for The New York Times. First it was the hiring of Bill Krystol as an Op/Ed columnist. Then it was their craptacular endorsement of both Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

Yet, if we're going to cast aspersions, let's not forget the embarrassment and disgrace Judith Miller's aiding and abetting of the Bush Administration brought to the paper's credibility not so long ago.

So it's just amazing that they'll come out with a hit job against John McCain. In an allegedly "investigative" report of John McCain's ethics, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk is a thinly vield gossip piece about whether he was lobbied hard, really really hard, by a woman called Vicki Iseman.

I am of two minds about this. Let me start with the deep and ponderous one first :

Look, anybody who has been married ought to never take anybody else's private life as a barometer of their professional shortcomings. Especially when you have someone like Hillary Clinton in the running.

Ben Smith back in the days of The Politicker

I hope Ben Smith is making a lot of money. We miss him terribly over at The Daily Gotham, because we really had a conversation going on our blogs about the mess that is New York politics. With his replacement? Not so much fun as good old Ben.

Which is why I wonder if he's really cozy and happy over at his new digs. Ben is supposed to be the lefty voice over at Politico.com; yet with his current acid keyboard he's earning the badge of the Democrat's worst frenemy, especially if that Democrat happens to be John Edwards.

He's the guy who first wrote about Edwards' $400 haircuts. He is now throwing Edwards under not only the bus, but the SUV and the private jet as well.

((( C'mon Ben, dude. As if anybody would be able to run a presidential campaign on Northwest fucking Airlines. Commercial airlines are snakes on a plane, dude. Snakes on a moddafruggin' plane! )))

So it is no wonder that a certain a-list blogger wants to kick his ass.

Literally.

Which A-list blogger told me non-chalantly that "he's go it coming".

I couldn't resist writing that title because there is so much left unsaid of the power of social networks.

So Lindsay proudly posted that image, celebrating her sell to Time.com --a photograph they found of Amanda via Flickr. Flickr, by the way, has become a social networking site disguised as photo storage company.

Anyhow, she took that photograph of Amanda while she and I and a whole gaggle of political and entertainment bloggers were in Amsterdam. We were part of the Bloggers in Amsterdam group, paid by Holland.com and sponsored by BlogAds.

Many women in the Feminist Bloggers Network know each other now for more than a couple of years. Women tend to operate social networks and powerlines a bit differently than men, and so our presence in mainstream media has not been as forceful as the handful of male-run blogs the mainstream journos tend to call "The Blogs".

Well, we not be as prominent in the public eye as some of us would like to be, but make no mistake --we're everywhere.

Want proof? MAJeff, the last quote in that Time.com article happens to be a FBN member who's been on a blogging (but not commenting) sabbatical; and used to be a key player in our blog.

Just saying.

Check out my photo of Amanda and me in Amsterdam after the jump ...

The Immigration Rallies
By 2015, the largest ethnic group in the country will be Latinos. The rallies are the beginning because, come 2008, we Latinos will be swinging the vote. The GOP knows it --that's why they appointed a chicano as their chairman.

Muhammad Yunus
He won a Noble Peace Prize for proving that poverty not only leads to violence but that the poverty of women, and the violence inherent in that poverty, affects whole nations.

Al Gore
Barack Obama
Cecilia Fire Thunder
Jennifer Hudson
John Edwards
Katie Couric
Keith Ellison
Nancy Pelosi and the new Democratic majority
Seminole / Hard Rock Cafe acquisition

And the "So good it's bad, bad, bad" Award goes to...

Stephen Colbert coined the phrase but the art of truthiness was perfected by Sacha Baron Cohen in his movie Borat.

He is so good he is bad. Badass cool. Brothercool cool. Borat has turned Cohen into the sexiest Orthodox Jew in Hollywood.