We alluded to this yesterday, but we thought we’d trot it out for a closer look:

“Conservationists write me these nasty letters because I support an industry like this,” the former vice presidential candidate said, after taking a chainsaw to an Evergreen Timber tree. “They write me these nasty letters using their pretty little pencils on their pretty little stationery not realizing. Where do you think your pencil and your piece of paper came from, people? It came from a tree that was harvested.”

It all falls apart upon inspection, of course. Who, besides your mother, writes letters these days? And who even owns a pencil, much less writes hatemail with it? (We prefer crayon when addressing screeds to Shrub, but that’s because he has a habit of ignoring printed material.) And if you’re going to write hatemail, you’re probably not going to use the flowery stationery. Unless it has a prominent Recycled symbol at the bottom, just so your target knows you care about the medium of your invective.

But forget about all that, and just admire the economy of Palin’s straw man: With a few quick dashes, she’s created a world, a universe of paranoid fantasy.

And nobody credits Palin for the quality of her work. At least, until a Lesser Wingnut tries to cop her moves, only to discover that only Jordan can fly:

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“Federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation of Delaware Republican Christine O’Donnell to determine if the former Senate candidate broke the law by using campaign money to pay personal expenses, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.” [AP/Boston Herald]

Do you ever wish that your next-generation cutting-edge envy-inducing iGadget wasn’t so damn quiet? Do you miss the thrill of keeping everyone within fifty feet of you awake all damn night? Well, wait no more!

The USBTypewriter™ is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence. Lovers of the look, feel, and quality of old fashioned manual typewriters can now use them as keyboards for any USB-capable computer, such as a PC, Mac, or even iPad!

Model as shown: $849. Or you can roll (or solder) your own for only $69!

USB Typewriter [via Tom Tomorrow]

If we were a Blog of Record, we would feel obligated to post the latest Talibunny Trivia — OMG Sarah Palin actually said “refudiate” on the teevee! And everybody in Alaska hates her! And she lies about environmentalists! — but since our Official Editorial Mandate is “Publish whatever the hell amuses/interests/disgusts/horrifies/baffles you, or short of that, whatever crap you can scrape together on deadline and pretend like you meant it,” we are pleased to bring to your attention the Anchorage Daily News 2011 Alaska Moose Calendar, which happily validates every stereotype we’ve held about Alaskans from the moment we learned at a frightfully young age that our mother grew up in Juneau.

Who would have thought that sodomy-loving, latte-drinking Noo Yawk City would have been Ground Zero for what happens when government services are cut back to the bone, but apparently because the Sanitation Department lost a bunch of employees, streets weren’t getting snowplowed as quickly as usual (Exhibit A: Blogenfreude’s crazy pictures of West 30th Street yesterday).

The problem with streets not being plowed is that while the locals can strap on snow shoes or cross-country skis, it’s a bit of an issue for the sick, the pregnant, and the ambulances.

To wit:

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Preznit git bad review:

Decision Points flaunts its postmodernity by blurring the distinction between fiction and non-fiction. That is to say, the parts that are not outright lies – particularly the accounts of Hurricane Katrina and the lead-up to the Iraq War – are the sunnier halves of half-truths. The legions of amateur investigative journalists on the internet – as usual, doing the job the major media no longer perform – are busily compiling lists of those lies. Gerhard Schroeder has already stated that the passage in which he appears is completely false. And even Mother has weighed in. Interviewed recently on television, she said she never showed Junior that jar, but maybe ‘Paula’ did. (It was assumed we would know that Paula was the maid.)

Probably the first and last time I will see the names George W. Bush and Michel Foucault in the same piece.

‘Damn Right’, I Said [London Review of Books]