Larry Flynt (publisher of Hustler) and Joe Francis (CEO of Girls Gone Wild, general waste of oxygen) are planning to ask Congress for $5 billion bailout for the porn industry*. Which would be ludicrous enough if the story stopped there. But then Flynt and Francis admitted freely that their industry isn’t in any actual financial danger, saying that while “DVD sales are have slipped over the past year…[w]eb traffic has continued to grow.” 
How are they justifying requesting $5 million for an industry that’s doing fine financially? It’s to alleviate the suffering …

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (aka “Joe the Plumber”) has been hired by PJTV to serve as a war correspondent in Israel. To reiterate, Pajama Media hired a man that’s not even licensed at the occupation in his name and decided to embed him and let him wing it. Levi Johnston is unemployed now. They should have him cover the situation in Zimbabwe. 
Matt Yglesias (and Steve Benen) wrote last week about the conservative movement’s realization that the progressives have a much stronger online infrastructure. The conservative reaction to this problem is to …

Loyal Reader Mike gets the hat tip for pointing us towards Dana Milbank’s absolutely hysterical WaPo story on the race for RNC chair, during which incumbent chair Mike Duncan discussed how to connect to the young folk of today:
“We have to do it in the Facebook, with the Twittering, the different technology that young people are using today,” Duncan ventured.
I sense a new internet meme to replace “I am aware of all Internet traditions” or, barring that, a new euphamism for Republican sex scandals (“Larry Craig got caught trying to …

It’s that time of year again. Via Reuters:
MOSCOW/KIEV (Reuters) – Russia shut down all gas flows to Europe through Ukraine on Wednesday, sharpening a dispute that has left industries and homes in southeast Europe without power and disrupted supplies to major economies.
On the face of it, the dispute is over Ukraine supposedly siphoning off natural gas flowing through it from Russia:
Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom said it had fully suspended supplies of transit gas towards Ukraine on Wednesday after accusing Kiev of keeping it.
What’s it really about? Follow over the …

Particularly as we move into an increasingly digital age, some folks get further enmeshed in the nostalgia of lo-fi and I’m not ashamed to be one of them.  So take a second and check out these different jewelery pieces using obsolete train tokens.

NYC subway pendant, $20  by sweet kathleen