Wonkette

R.I.P. SENATOR PELL: One of Rhode Island’s awesomest former senators has died at the age of 90. Claiborne Pell was a big fat liberal and a millionaire who was obsessed with UFOs and jogged around Newport in his old Princeton letter sweater and drove a Mustang with a roll-bar because he was such a bad driver. He helped create the NEA but didn’t like modern art. He also pushed for federal subsidies of higher education, later renamed Pell Grants, without which your editor would have had to join the circus or go to work at the renderer’s. Senator Pell was a comical character straight out of a Fitzgerald novel, and it is really too bad that they don’t make rich people like that anymore. [New York Times, Providence Journal]

Roll Call is a venerable old Capitol Hill rag we should read more often, as it has to do with “politics” etc., but it costs munnie$ for a subscription, so meh. It probably has lots of valuable information and things! Anyway, people on the Twitters think it might be shutting down. At least, MSNBC cartoonist guy Daryl Cagle thinks so. However, some other guy thinks this is just the craziest thing he’s ever heard. MORE »

Ha ha, Mitt Romney made a funny! The Wall Street Journal asked him about his New Year’s resolutions, and he said he had decided to “stop wearing a suit and tie to bed.” Silly Mitt, everyone knows his head falls off if you remove the tie. [WSJ]

Back in the day, people would ring in the New Year the old fashioned way: by scoring an eight ball, buying a $5,000 VIP table at a Miami Beach party hosted by a fancy young rap impresario, and having sex in a jacuzzi with a half-dozen hot Brazilian models while smoking cigars made out of hundred-dollar bills. But this year, with everybody impoverished and starving, festivities were looking a little slimmer. MORE »

We know precisely two things about Kathy Griffin, which makes us a Resident Expert on this lady around these parts: number one, she is a COMEDIENNE, and number two, she dated some portly rich guy. What does this have to do with her glorious New Year’s Eve show with Anderson Cooper? Nothing! Just, they cut to commercial break and Kathy’s mic was still on and she shouted a funny insult at some hapless cocksucker, literally.

• Happy New Year! Everybody’s Zunes died. [New York Times]
• You can still get your Dora the Explorer and your Stephen Colbert on the teevee because the evil corporations Viacom and Time Warner were able to resolve their differences. [Los Angeles Times]
• Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts says judges are too poorly paid to bother being judges anymore. [CNN]
• If you have a job and decent credit — and those are two big ifs these days — now is a fantastic time to buy a house, because the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage interest rate is hovering right around 5 percent. Put into historical perspective, that is FUCKING INSANE. [BusinessWeek]
• The Treasury Department will make its own decisions about how to rescue Detroit automakers, thank you very much. [Washington Post]
• Congratulations, America! You survived the worst year for the stock market since the Great Depression, and 2009 is sure to be awesome. [Guardian]

Eh, enough blogging for 2008. We leave you with this important image of demonic archpundit Andrew Sullivan in hobo rags at Subway, blogging about Obama as hatchlings dance the devil’s tango in a parallel dimension, THE END.

TV Gal: Hey there Bobby Rush, don’t you think it’s legitimate for the Democratic leadership to be concerned about this horrible crook Blago finally selling off that Senate seat?
Bobby Rush: Orval Faubus, Bull Connor, George Wallace, the end.
TV Gal: ??
Bobby Rush: Look lady just shut up already.

[YouTube]

• HOORAY: One of your male associate editor’s favorite bloggers, the “reasonable conservative” satirist Jon Swift, asked your Wonkette to submit its best post of 2008 for his annual “best blog posts” roundup, which includes many treats for your reading pleasure. Since Ken, Sara and your male associate editor have not talked to each other in two weeks, your male associate editor secretly submitted one of his own posts in terribly selfish fashion. [Jon Swift]

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