Longtime Stinque detainees will recall that once upon a time, before the Not the MSNBC Ad, there was an MSNBC ad. And a purty ad it was, with rotating headlines and a sponsor who actually paid for the privilege of raping your eyeballs.

That’s the part we recall fondly at Stinque World Domination Headquarters and Discount Vuvuzelas: the twenty-dollar check that arrived in the mailbox every month. The MSNBC ad paid per “impression” (each time you visited a page) and not per click. The substitute Google ad isn’t nearly as beermoneylicious, and we only keep it running for the occasional context-dependent amusement.

So what happened to the MSNBC ad? Simply put, one day they told us to fuck off. We were using very naughty language on our site, distressing the advertisers who preferred less competition for their expensive eyeball-raping. We could either tone down the salty talk, or kiss that monthly Jackson goodbye.

We’re not sellouts. At least not for that price.

We’ve kept the ad title long past the gag’s expiration date, simply because we’ve grown quite fond of it. Also, you never know when it might prove handy.

Like, well, now.

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You may have heard that Sarah Palin wants to travel to The Land That Goalies Failed to meet Maggie Thatcher. You may also have heard that there’s little light in the Baroness’s attic these days, which won’t stop Talibunny from getting a photo op, and may force us to reopen the Human Prop category in the 2010 Stinque Awards.

You probably haven’t seen the photos that accompanied the Daily Mail’s story on the subject, however. We reproduce them above, mainly because it took us ten minutes to come up with our headline, and the sole purpose of this post is to justify it.

In Hong Kong, cars drive on the left. Elsewhere in China, cars drive on the right. Problem solved!

This also serves a geek illustration for interfacing two systems. And a very expensive DNA model.

Also, U.S. energy policy. But we’re too tired to work that one out.

The flipper bridge [Kottke]

The President of These United States will be delivering a speech from the Oval Office tonight, which we’re told is Really Serious — tantamount to Dad turning the car around — because The President of These United States never delivers a speech from the Oval Office, unless he’s telling us about a quagmire he’s about to launch in the Mideast, or consoling us about a nice schoolteacher who just got blown to bits on live television, or diagnosing the Republic with a serious case of ennui.

Or quits. But that was a Happy Moment.

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One day in third grade, our friend Barry showed us a pamphlet with a map of Vietnam inside. Scattered across the map were pictures of gas pumps. On the gauge of each pump was a number. The number reflected war dead in that area.

For convenience, we usually date our political awakening to that moment. It was Spring 1968.

As it happens, we don’t recall Vietnam joining OPEC in the intervening decades, so we can’t vouch for the research the pumps represented. But it was our first exposure to what later would be summarized as Follow The Money, which, when we think about it, is really just an adjunct to Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation of a political act usually involves cash.

Hey, did you know Afghanistan’s a wonderful place to run an oil pipeline?

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In light of what’s going down in South Carolina right now — with not one, not two, but three Demrat primary candidates suspected of being plants by a shadowy, wealthy political conspiracy — why do we choose instead to devote the morning post to failed California Secretary of State candidate Orly Taitz?

Because she’s adorable, that’s why.

And besides, with events moving so rapidly, we’ll probably have some fresh SC developments by the time we wake up.

In South Carolina, Greene is mystery man despite winning Democratic Senate nod [WaPo]

Clyburn Alleges Conspiracy To Plant Candidates In Three Dem Primaries In S.C. [TPM]

We keep imagining the great mistakes of South Carolina and Arizona in some kind of competition for the America’s Cup of Douchebaggery — just as one takes a commanding lead, the other comes from behind — but we’re beginning to wonder whether they’re really tag-teaming us.

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