Wow, those scoop artists at Bloomberg are really on a roll! First they got the exclusive on Apple CEO Steve Jobs's obituary. Sure, Jobs wasn't actually dead, but the report generated all sorts of interesting attention and buzz. Now the financial wire's editors have become the first in the world to report that John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge. Bloomberg arrived at this conclusion after misreading the Times, which reported that Palin's husband was arrested 22 years ago on a drunk-driving charge. Compounding the mistake, a tipster told us, is that the error was silently fixed, with no correction issued — "a verboten act under the Bloomberg way." Perhaps the DC bureau, headed by old Wall Street Journal hand Al Hunt, conspired to guard against anyone's summary dismissal from the unforgiving high-pressure news organization. Click the thumbnail to see Bloomberg's original mistake.

Palin Fever: Celebrities the world over are fired up about potential VP Sarah Palin and eager to weigh in with the fruits of their opposition research. The latest multi-hyphenate to opine is Albert Brooks, writing on the Huffington Post under the barely disguised pseudonym "A. Brooks." "Do we want a president who cannot communicate to their own child that possibly having a baby a year after you get your driver's license is not the smartest thing to do?" asks Brooks. "Is this the new way for women to break the glass ceiling? To have their daughters throw their babies at it?" Perhaps not, but it would sure make for a hilarious summer tentpole at 20th Century Fox! [HuffPo]

Here is a clip of presumptive vice presidential Sarah Palin responding two years ago to a hypothetical question about whether she would reconsider her opposition to abortion even in the case of rape or incest in the tragic hypothetical event that one of her daughters were impregnated by a rapist or relative. "I would choose life," she repeats, smiling placidly, in what should serve to remind all of the nauseating mendaciousness of that trope we keep hearing about how Palin's daughter's non-hypothetical pregnancy is a "personal" matter that ought to be "off-limits" to the media and in any case "irrelevant" to the greater issues of the day. This question, first asked (and answered decently!) in my own personal-political memory of former vice president Dan Quayle, is now itself old enough kill a fetus without the consent of its parents in most American states. By what demented logic does its relevance recede when the hypothetical becomes actual? As Meghan McCain pointed out in a blog post today, it's a question that, posed of her father eight years ago, "single-handedly changed my life."Specifically, John McCain was asked what he would do if Meghan, then 14, were to get pregnant.

While all of Hollywood waits with bated breath to hear the reaction to VP pick Sarah Palin from the only actress who matters — her doppleganger, Tina Fey — headline-friendly Lindsay Lohan has decided to wade into the political waters, spouting off her own, unsolicited thoughts on the matter from her Myspace celebrity blog. Now that Palin has revealed that her 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant, she's become fair game for the Us Weekly set (indeed, she's snagged that cover as well as the front panel of OK!) — and who knows that territory better than Lohan?

Finally, it's come to this: McCain is pulling out of an interview with professional softballer Larry King, because King's CNN peer Campbell Brown accidentally asked McCain proxy Tucker Bounds some tough questions about Sarah Palin's readiness to be commander in chief. (As we said before! The media forgives everything besides violating your own narrative!) This will teach Larry to keep everyone else at the network in line! Here are some of the many many lies John McCain's increasingly whiny campaign is accusing the liberal media of spreading: First of all, every single word of today's Elisabeth Bumiller story on Sarah Palin. All of it is FICTION, they say! Like that thing about how she was a member of that secessionist party because she attended their conference and her husband was a member of their party until be became an "independent" in the '90s? That is false because Palin has been a registered Republican since 1984. More:

Sarah Palin! Do you know anything about her? Neither does John McCain! But now we must learn, because we will be hearing a lot of crazy things about her over the next month (unless she drops out). Which of these things are true? Which are false? WHO'S THE FATHER? We will tell you the TRUE things, below, and then we will speculate wildly as to the crazy conspiracy nonsense. It will be fun. It's All True! "Book burner." Not literally. Though as mayor of the tiny, presumably quirky little Alaska town of Wasilla, Palin did inject a bit of old-fashioned culture war politics into the local library. From Time, via Kos: "'She asked the library how she could go about banning books,' he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. 'The librarian was aghast.'" Hah. So much for the "sexy librarian" thing, right? She has a crazy preacher! Once again, sort of. Though this one is less likely to be relevant to anything, because it's a crazy right-wing white preacher, and we are quite used to seeing them on TV and not even bothering to be shocked by them anymore. Anyway. Sarah spoke before her old church in Wasilla a couple months ago. She grew up and was baptized there. The senior pastor there since 1999 is, obv, a crazy right-wing evangelical nutcase named Ed Kalnins. He once said Kerry voters will go to hell, and people who criticize the president will go to hell, and Iraq and 9/11 were wars of faith and other fairly doctrinaire beliefs for the modern-day Christian right, their recently scrubbed moderate-ish image notwithstanding. Anyway, crazy pastor! She is a secessionist! So yeah, there's a wacky political party in Alaska that wants to secede from the union. It's called the "Alaskan Independence Party" and Sarah Palin was a member back in the '90s, until she ran for mayor. They hate America! Sarah Palin hates America! Also, awesome logo. Conspiracies! Trig Still Not Hers Sarah Palin's most recent baby, four-month-old Trig, was rumored to actually be Palin's oldest daughter Bristol's baby, back until the campaign announced that Bristol is five months pregnant now. Some people are unconvinced! Read the entirely circumstantial evidence right here. The "real" story still has weird holes. Why was Bristol pulled out of school, is Levi the real father and does he actually intend to go through with this ridiculous wedding? But honestly we're inclined to believe the 44-year-old woman actually did give birth to the baby with Down Syndrome. But still, the timeline is weird. Now, finally, the Enquirer weighs in: they say the Bristol pregnancy was supposed to be announced after the RNC, at which point the shotgun wedding would've been finished. But Bristol rebelled! Or something! Myths She strangled a fucking bear to death once. There is no evidence to support this rumor. (Up top, the alleged cover of this week's Us Weekly.)

Of all the pundits' and politicos' stated opinions on Sarah Palin, John McCain's spectacularly curious choice for running mate, this is perhaps the most stirring and urgent. Once celebrated, now mourned actress Lindsay Lohan—she of the former cocaine problems and current lesbianism—has posted yet another blog post on her MySpace page, this one exploring the nuances of political life versus private life. Hands off little Bristol Palin's baby issues, she implores:

There's already a fake blog for Levi Johnston, the young Alaskan man who impregnated his girlfriend, Bristol Palin, and as a result will soon be the son-in-law of Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. The twist: levijohnston.com wasn't registered by an opportunistic domain-name speculator or a political troublemaker. The site previously hosted the real blog of Levi Johnston, a developer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. The kicker: He says he's voting for Ron Paul.

There's no better example yet of John McCain's sudden inability to work his beloved national press like the mess that is the Sarah Palin pick. It's actually hard to remember now that John McCain used to be the coziest man in Washington with the political press corps. Just like it's hard to remember now when "experience" was the McCain campaign's primary selling point, but whatever. You know what happened—McCain was supposed to pick his buddy Joe Lieberman, or lightweight right-wing Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, and then suddenly he's introducing this charming Sarah Palin woman. The move was supposed to signal "maverick," but as allegations of ethical misdeeds and family drama painfully leaked out over a long holiday weekend, it became apparent that the pick was so maverick-y as to be positively outside the bounds of logic. So don't listen to people who say the media is beating up on Sarah Palin over some private family matters—they're beating up on McCain for acting like an idiotic political novice. It seemed so simple, at first. A young woman governor, beloved in her ultimate frontier state. You pull soccer moms, right-wing Christians, maybe a couple disgruntled Hillary voters, and independent Westerners. She even had a bit of energy cred! But when McCain runs as the "experience" candidate and ridicules Obama's lack of foreign policy experience and seriousness and then defends Palin by saying her foreign policy experience is that her state is close to Russia it causes the "serious"-minded commentators to take notice of the only sort of political malfeasance they genuinely can't abide: violating your own message. As Michael Kinsley puts it:

Sure, Harvard grads have to go through more interviews to get a job in Google customer service than Alaska governor Sarah Palin did to become Republican John McCain's nominee for vice president. But an aide says that doesn't mean the McCain campaign didn't properly vet the candidate as a story in today's New York Times alleges. They totally Googled her, okay?Aides told the paper that before deciding to choose Palin as his running mate just moments after meeting her for the first time last Thursday, McCain knew Palin's 17-year-old daughter was 5 months pregnant and betrothed to be married to another teenager. Also, McCain knew Palin is currently under an ethics investigation for allegedly improperly firing a state employee who wouldn't do her bidding — all it took to find that out was a quick Google search. “It was obviously something that anybody Googling Sarah Palin knew was in the news and there was a very thorough vetting done on that and also on the daughter,” the aid told the Times. Good to know McCain has — or at least his people have — finally figured "the Google" out after some initial confusion typical of Republicans in the White House and aiming for it.

John McCain was likely clueless his running mate Sarah Palin had an underage daughter with a love child — or at least that's what the Times is implying this morning. Meanwhile it looks like everyone from Time magazine to the National Enquirer to the entire population of Wasilla, Alaska was hip to the scandalous pregnancy. How could McCain have been left in the dark? It seems the presumptive Republican presidential nominee settled on Palin at the last minute, after figuring out that social conservatives might use the convention to nuke his top two choices, pseudo-Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, both pro-choice. Republican operatives vetted Palin for four or five days, one of them told the Times anonymously, but it sounds like even that's a reach:

Far from us to "belabor" something like this, but 17-year-old Bristol Palin is pregnant. Which officially rules out, as a 19-year-old Gawker source did yesterday, the insane internet rumors that Sarah Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her daughter's premarital sex-caused one. Here is our favorite Alaskan blog on the issue, or take a walk on the "high road" over at Jezebel.

UPDATE: Bristol Palin is pregnant, and John McCain supposedly knew.

Now and then some clever Youtube users actually produce an intentionally funny political video. Case in point, "McCake," which came out this weekend. It explores just what kind of a birthday cake would be baked by a bitter, short-fused, intemperate lifetime politician who bristles violently at even the suggestion of criticism and who just knows that it's his turn to be the President, goddamit! Clip after the jump.

NPR reports that someone edited Sarah Palin's Wikipedia page Friday just before the word got out that she was John McCain's pick for a running mate. The edits were obviously made to make Palin look good. There were about 30 of them, made by one person. I'll spell out what NPR is dying to say: That one person was Sarah Palin.Had this happened to Joe Biden's entry, it wouldn't be deemed a story for National Public Radio. Still, I like this All Things Considered writeup, because it pretty much admits in the first sentence that NPR's army of anti-GOP reporters missed the scoop that Palin was McCain's pick. None of them thought to set a watch on her Wikipedia page.

John McCain's first mistake was trying to seem "hip" and "with it" by blasting Van Halen's atrocious song "Right Now" at a stump stop in Ohio. His second mistake was not getting permission to play the treacly Sammy Hagar track from the band, the members of which are not so old that they actually support the grim candidate. The band's publicist says, "Permission was not sought or granted nor would it have been given." It's like the time when Reagan's campaigners totally misunderstood "Born in the USA" and tried to use it as their theme song until Bruce Springsteen told them to cut the crap. Except that "Right Now" can't be misunderstood because it doesn't mean anything, it's just a lot of hopeful noise and... Ohhhh... [Wired]

(Update: Yes, it's a Photoshop job from a contest at Hollywood Newsroom.) There are no naked pix of the Republican vice-presidential candidate to be found — yet — but this one will hold me over. Click it for full size. Thanks to GOP hottie hunter Rachel Marsden.

Buried in Barack Obama's nomination-acceptance speech:

The Internet can agree on this much: John McCain's new running mate, former Miss Alaska runner-up Sarah Palin, sure is purty, as documented on freshly launched website VPILF.com. If you don't get what the "ILF" after "VP" stands for, go watch American Pie again. And only the most inbred of partisan donkeys would refuse to laugh at Palin's snappy response a week ago to a reporter who asked her if she'd be McCain's vice president: "What is it exactly that the VP does, every day?" If she keeps this up, she could do for the Republican Party what Bob Lutz did for Cadillac.

Maybe Barack Obama is a celebrity after all: According to the AP, more than 38 million viewers tuned in to watch the Democratic nominee's DNC speech last night. Even excepting the uncounted audience who tuned in via C-SPAN, PBS, or online, "Nielsen Media Research said more people watched Obama speak than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final American Idol or the Academy Awards this year." If next week's Republican National Convention has got its work cut out for it, John McCain might want to start with a VP pick who's got more ratings power than the lead from 30 Rock. [AP]