The lucky lady: Kathryn "Kate" Rogers. We're not sure where the wedding is taking place, yet, but Rush reads the site, so maybe he'll let us know!

Rush loves the holidays: his last wedding was on Memorial Day, 1994. Prior to that, his second wife left him on Christmas.

The AP now report that Bill Sparkman, who was found in September bound and gagged with duct tape in Daniel Boone National Forest, staged the scene to look like a homicide.

Expect to see extensive discussion of this on Fox News, perhaps quoting in a fair and balanced way from articles like this. Which are correct despite today's news.

Media Matters found Rush reading this item on air today and agreeing with it, somehow. We're thrilled to hear we're on the same page in terms of made-up economic theories, Rush. Do you want to go bowling some time? Email us.

Here is how he did it:

I don't doubt that the number of H1N1 cases out there is being hyped. And for many of the same reasons that AIDS was—and still is—hyped in Africa. Everything in Africa's called AIDS. The reason is they get aid money for it. AIDS is the biggest pile of-the biggest pot they throw money into.

In the professional hate-mongering world, we call this the double-reverse-holy-shit-is-that-a-lot-of-ignorant-hate. And you could not find a better example than is on display here. The key is to start squarely in the realm of reason. After a few seconds of saying reasonable things, jump instantly and without warning onto your hate platform. (In this clip, the leap happens at about 2:10.) Traipse about for a bit. Now it's all about getting enough hate out of your face before the language part of your listener's brain can process what's happening. Say the hate...keep saying the hate...say a little more hate... then BANG: Dismount! Back to reality (in a way)!

The idea is that a potential listener, being a reasonable person, might say to themselves, "Well, yeah—this guy kind of does have a point. Swine flu is being blown way out of proportion with respect to the actual potency of the virus, and, yes, it is a scientific fact that antibiotics work only on bacteria and... wait...did he just say something terrible and hate-filled about AIDS being exaggerated in Africa? Oh well, I will just continue to agree with him. AIDS in Africa is made up!"

Hey, if you're going to hate-monger you might as well hate-monger with the best.

An obscure blogger published a terribly written "report" on how "famed Time reporter Joe Klein" got a look at Barack Obama's undergraduate thesis on the "so-called founding fathers." This obvious satire was even tagged "satire," which is what Denton is always trying to get me to do when I guest at Deadspin. (It ruins the joke, Nick!)

Michael Ledeen, of course, immediately picked it up and even wrote this hilarious line:

Maybe instead of fuming about words that Rush Limbaugh never uttered, the paladins of the free press might ask the president about words that he did write.

Yes, maybe! Maybe they might ask him that! Hah!

Rush Limbaugh got so excited about this! He called imaginary college student Obama a "little boy" and read from his imaginary thesis. And then Rush was like oh this might be fake.

And Rush said "I have had this happen to me," referring to the time everyone mistakenly repeated one quote about black people that Rush Limbaugh did not actually say. And when it was pointed out to the media that Rush Limbaugh did not say this thing, Rush claims "the media" said "it doesn't matter because we know he thinks it." You can go ahead and watch Rick Sanchez apologize to Rush and decide if Rush has a point or not. (Hint: he doesn't.)

It's not like anyone's behavior here is unexpected or even all that terrible, it's mostly just hilarious. Once again: if you make something up and put it on the internet Michele Bachmann and Rush Limbaugh will believe it.

In Limbaugh's WSJ piece, entitled "The Race Card, Football and Me" he writes: "My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race? Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race? Those controversial racial views?"

What are his racial views exactly? Media Matters documented 28 separate occasions where Limbaugh used racially charged language. They didn't go the Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Michael Wilbon route, picking quotes out of thin air, they did the research and the results are pretty damning.

In this clip Rush calls Obama an "angry black guy"

Here he says "[I]n Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering"

There are 26 other clips that don't exactly portray Rush as someone who does not see race. Quite the contrary. Rush seems obsessed with race. Turns out his critics weren't exactly off the mark, they just choose the wrong quotes.

Well, to be fair, he said most of those terrible things about black people. Most of them! But not one of them. So Rick Sanchez has to apologize, to Rush, for assuming that because all the rest of the racist things were true that he didn't need to question this other one. "We have been unable to independently confirm that quote," Sanchez says, though he doesn't repeat the quote.

The fake quote is: "slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back. I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark." It comes from Wikipedia, which cites a book that got it from Wikipedia.

Also Limbaugh would've been maybe the third or fourth-most objectionable NFL owner, frankly, and owning the Rams would be more of a punishment than a fun investment. So, you know, who cared? Besides black players who didn't want to work for Limbaugh for obvious reasons. Those reasons being that all the other racist Limbaugh quotes weren't fabricated.

Limbaugh, a noted athlete, was a member of an investment group organized by sports mogul Dave Checketts until everyone remembered that he hates black people, of whom a lot are employed by the Rams and other NFL teams. After NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said yesterday that NFL owners are "all held to a high standard here, and I think divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about," Checketts officially axed Limbaugh from the bid.

We're actually disappointed, because Limbaugh and the NFL deserve one another more than they could ever know, and Limbaugh fits right in by our lights in the NFL's grand tradition of associating with people who nearly decapitate their ex-wives, raise fighting dogs, and accidentally shoot themselves in the leg. But we're not quite as disappointed as the folks at Red State, for whom it is exactly the same in all respects as the Holocaust.

This wouldn't have happened if Condoleezza Rice were commissioner. Anyway, who says racists can't own professional sports franchises?

In his show today, O'Reilly declared that the realistic discussion of Limbaugh's racist past amounts to nothing more than the "thought police" crushing the radio host's free speech: "This is 1984-type stuff, ladies and gentlemen. Thought police posture," he declared. All this because O'Reilly's research staff can't find a specific NAACP-related quote attributed to Limbaugh. He also specifically names NBC as a perpetrator.

There's also hubbub over a comment Limbaugh allegedly made about James Earl Ray, the man who shot Martin Luther King, Jr: "You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed."

But Limbaugh's not one to let someone else fight his battles, so he's using his lawyers to fight against those who claim he praised James Earl Ray. So, someone, please find proof...

• Pamela Anderson should be investigated for breaking child labor laws after having a 9-year old girl hold her dress train and sit at her feet at this week's Hollywood Style Awards. Or that's what a Child Labor Coalition spokesman thinks: "I would want to speak to the child to ask her if it is something she willingly did. Nine is very young, and an awards ceremony is a long time for a child to be out holding a dress." This could be bigger than the Triangle Factory Fire. [Page Six]
  
  
• Do people really have to ask why Rush Limbaugh's still a member of the infamously racist Everglades Club in Palm Beach? [Page Six]
  
  
• Oh no! Katy Perry better watch out: Russell Brand's ex-girlfriend says he's incapable of monogamy. Their breakup would be the death of love forever. [Page Six]
  
  
• Jon Gosselin has been ordered to return $180,000 he took from a joint account he and wife Kate share. So now maybe that money can go toward, you know, his gaggle of children. [Star]
  
  
• Jeffrey Tambor, who plays the Bluth family patriarch on Arrested Development, recently gave birth to a pair of twin boys. Well, his wife Kasia did the actual birthing, but let's not parse here, okay? [People]
  
  
• Christie Brinkley and ex-husband Peter Cook have finally signed their divorce settlement. Does this mean their tabloid war will die down? Doubtful: Cook's lawyers yesterday described Brinkley as a "bitter, vindictive, angry woman," while Brinkley reminded us all that Cook's been called an "extreme narcissist." [NYDN]
  
  
• Paris Hilton adopted a ridiculous pet — a pig — and animal activists are mad as hell. This all seems so familiar. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• Very important news: Peaches Geldof is now blonde again. All those hunger strikes paid off. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Swoon: Jordan Catalano himself, Jared Leto, has joined the fight for gay marriage. [E!]
  
  
• Ashton Kutcher once told then-girlfriend January Jones that she wouldn't be good at acting. And now she's proving him wrong on Mad Men. Well, she's famous because of Mad Men. Whether she's a good actress remains open to debate. [NYDN]

Congrats to the Miss America organizers for finding a celebrity judge precisely as revolting as Miss USA's Perez Hilton! Now you just need a stupid contestant to become a political martyr and your 2010 media strategy will be basically mapped out.

And, black contestants, don't get your hopes up.

Look, Rush Limbaugh ran over a carboard cutout of Al Gore, in an electric car, and then he backed up and did it again! COMEDY! AT TEN O'CLOCK! HAVE YOU EVER IN YOUR LIFE SEEN SUCH A THING??

(To be fair it is hard, but possible, to ignore both of them. It is actually much harder to ignore Jay.)

The waterworks tweaked out a few mists at a press conference this afternoon, when Pelosi was discussing the pervasive, volatile anger that has infected our nation. It's all so familiar!

I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late '70s in San Francisco. This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place and … I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.

Of course it's a big deal when politicians cry — especially when it's a girly-girl talking about gay San Francisco! — and it wasn't long before Pelosi's arch-nemesis, Rush Limbaugh piped up and called the display nothing more than "tears of a crown." "You know that's fake because you can't cry when you have botox all over your face." Some say she's only exasperating exacerbating the problem, like Drudge, whose headline highlights that she's warning us of political violence. So, now people are angry at her weepy anger.

One self-styled citizen "commentator" over at ABC News called her a "witch who should disappear." Another confessed his — or her? — dream: "I wish the the headline read: Nancy Pelosi chokes to death." The people miss the point: chill the fuck out. Never mind, though, because it's just Nancy Pelosi. She's a politician who has dedicated her whole life to her constituents and must be evil. Hogwash.

But, if some people don't think she's serious, let's look toward Hollywood. It's there, where the real heroes reside, that a man tried to attack Ryan Seacrest. And the guy had a knife on his person. And it went down in a Children's Hospital parking lot! Seacrest is fine.

Worried fans, however, are distraught. "Thank God nothing happened! Lock that suspect up for good," reads one comment. Another? "Thank God for security when you need 'em." And that's the real point in all of this: the national insanity endangers our celebrities!!

Don't you see, Rush and company? Even celebrities aren't immune! This is some real, real shit, people. Panic. Now.

Or, that's what Pelosi should have said.

Basically, the speech amounts to nothing more than our nation's Commander-in-Chief urging kids to stay in school, for, if they do, perhaps one day they'll be president. Floridian Republican Jim Greer was one of the first to seize up over the news, and called Obama's September 8th an attempt to "spread" his "socialist ideology." Greer then got into nitty-gritty politics, and warned that the President would simply be indoctrinating guppies with his liberal politics.

Conservatives are easily swayed, almost collective organism, so their calls for prohibition only grew more voracious. They took particular offense over the announcement that students would be encouraged to "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president."

Rush Limbaugh was soon on board. So was Glenn Beck. And then Greer reared his head on Hardball this evening. Though he and his knows Presidents often address students, this is different, because Obama's a proselytizer of anti-American madness.

The debate has become so heated, in fact, that school districts in six states are refusing to show the video, for, it would seem, they believe Greer's worries that anti-Obama kids will be "ostracized." This couldn't be further from the truth.

First of all, kids are kids and, if our increasingly dim childhood memory serves, don't care much for nitty-gritty policy. They care about recess and juice boxes. By folding to conservative pressure, schools and parents both are tacitly vilifying the President when, in fact, even if he were to discuss policy, most kids wouldn't care or would forget about it after cartoons.

Perhaps the most worrisome aspect of this outrage is that the kids are being denied an opportunity to hear directly from the President, a man to whom some civics classes — if such things still exist — encourage. Democracy goes both ways, we're taught, so wouldn't hearing a generic message about the importance of education be an important lesson in and of itself?

If you ask us, America's children would definitely benefit from hearing the President, particularly the nation's first black president, discuss the necessity of reading, writing and arithmetic. Especially since a Florida school distract just now, in 2009, removed the term "negro" from its racial background form.

Meanwhile, the White House has caved and agreed to release the speech's text ahead of the event. They also changed the announcement letter's language about "helping the president" to "write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals." Both moves only give validity to these inane, unnecessary protests.

At least the kids learned one valuable lesson: bitch loudly and often enough and you can bring the White House to its knees.

This photo was snapped today by graphic designer/blogger Ashley Simko in front of a Manhattan Duane Reade, the horrifyingly ubiquitous pharmacy chain that is alternately every New Yorker's late night lifesaver or the bane of their very existence.

While this may be yet another example of Duane Reade's devotion to "place-based" advertising, mainly it seems more like a campaign designed specifically to provide fodder for the Duane Reade Sucks and I Hate Duane Reade blogs. Seriously, have we become that much of a drug culture that this sort of advertising makes it past the focus groups? Well yeah, probably.

Prescriptions. Easier to Get Than Taxicabs [Simko]

Daily Finance's Jeff Bercovici did some poking around and discovered that Limbaugh hasn't bothered to put his Fifth Avenue penthouse on the market.

Limbaugh has yet to make any such arrangements — or, if he has, he's been keeping them from Kit Carson, his producer and "chief of staff." When I attempted to contact Limbaugh to ask him about his relocation plans, I was directed to Carson, who told me he'd forwarded my remarks to his boss, to no avail. "All I can tell you is, I put the question into him, and I got nothing back," Carson said.

Rush, what the heck are you waiting for, man?! Remember when Alec Baldwin lied about moving to Europe if Bush won? Do you want to be viewed as the conservative version of a lying liar like Alec Baldwin? Of course not! You have a sterling reputation for personal integrity to uphold. Now get the hell out before it's too late! Just go man, please. Texas beckons you.

Rush Limbaugh Threatens, Fails To Leave Manhattan After Tax Tirade [Daily Finance via Cityfile]
Illustration by the amazing Jim Cooke

Well, he did have a second teleprompter to fall back on just in case, so the seance involving Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin that probably made the thing fall and break failed after all! Regardless, Jake Tapper, a man who knows Drudge link bait when he sees it, reports:

Midway through his speech on urban and metropolitan policy in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building this afternoon, one of his two small glass prompters came crashing down, hitting the wood floor and crashing in many pieces. It made quite a ruckus.

"Oh, goodness," a startled President Obama said. "Sorry about that, guys."

He then proceeded on with his remarks, "To pull our economy back from the brink, including the largest and most sweeping economic recovery plan in our nation's history…"

For the rest of the speech the president relied on the one remaining teleprompter, to his right, and notes on his podium to finish his speech.

Shards of glass remained near the president's feet for the duration of his speech.

And here's video of the incident from CNN:

How does he, this man, Obama, do it? He must be the Antichrist! It's the only plausible explanation at this point.

If a teleprompter falls in the White House does it make a sound? [Jake Tapper/ABC]
Video via YouTube

Let's go through these, shall we?

• Yet another ethics complaint was filed against Palin in Alaska yesterday. What for? Oh, remember when we learned that Palin, great American fiscal conservative and hater of wasteful spending that she is, was charging the state a travel per diem to work out of her own home in Wasilla? Well apparently she's continued to do it, pocketing several thousand dollars of "bonus" income in the process. So dang mavericky!
  
  
• Palin spoke to the Anchorage Daily News about her resignation and once again offered a mystery grab-bag of reasons for her abrupt departure.

  It's a combination of things that has brought me to this place of knowing. I love Alaskans too much to put them through a lame duck session heading into my final year in office; I was going to be honest and tell them I'm not going to run for re-election. I'm not going to let Alaskans go through a year of stymied, paralyzed administration and not getting anything done. I'm going to let Sean Parnell take this and we will see that things will let up...With Sean in the governor's seat it won't be the politics of personal destruction, I don't believe...Especially when all these lawmakers are lining up for office. Their desire would be to clobber the administration left and right so that they can position themselves for office. I'm not going to put Alaskans through that.

• Pill-addled party boss Rush Limbaugh still sees Palin as a viable leader of the Republican party. He took time away from being a Viagra-fueled sex tourist to make a statement about her on his show.

  These people saying that she's an instant target because she quit, that's just inside-the-Beltway formulaic and she's not that. If anything this woman, her m.o. is outside-the-box and not formulaic. All I know is that she is going to continue to fire-up people in the conservative Republican base as often as she speaks to 'em.

• Despite the fact that most of the people closest to her had no idea she was resigning last Friday, ABC is reporting that Palin consulted with Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani about the move.
  
  
• And finally, there's the inevitable freakout by Hitler over Sarah Palin's quitting. These are always funny, and this one is oh so very funny. Even funnier than the Michael Jackson death freakout, in my opinion.
  
  
  
  
  
  New Ethics Complain Filed Against Palin [Mudflats]
  Palin Says Ethics Inquiries Paralyzing [ADN]
  Sarah Palin May Have Quit, But That Won't Stop Her From Running For President in 2012, Says Rush Limbaugh [Daily News]
  Palin Called GOP Leaders Before Quitting [ABC]
  Hitler/Palin vid via YouTube
  Pic via Runner's World

In a statement released tonight Chapur, a 41 year-old television reporter, said the following:

I have decided to send to you this release that will be the only one, to thus clarify certain incorrect things that are being spread worldwide so as to give an end to the subject that as you can imagine is of great pain to me, as for my two children, my family and all the great friends that I have known and harvested throughout my life and that had always been there for me.

1. I won't speak about my private life as it just belongs to me. It has already been made too public during these last days, bringing to me even more pain.

2. I categorically deny that the individual who hacked my hotmail account was the one friend with whom I shared days in Brazil in the Rolex Regatta. This friend, as you could all well read in my recently published e-mails, is an excellent, respectable and honorable man incapable of making anything similar to that. Far away from being the author of this evil action he was instead another victim. In December 2008, the stolen e-mails were sent by the hacker to him as well as to the newspaper The State.

3. My hotmail account was hacked around November 24th, through an old e-mail account under my name provided by an Argentine company. I made my denouncement at that time at the Argentine company, where my old account was still opened, as did the denouncement at hotmail. I was finally able to close down that old account and to recover by December 8th, my hacked hotmail account, after answering a long questionnaire sent by Microsoft. All this is registered in Microsoft as well as in the Argentine company. I kept all my requests and the answers given by Microsoft at that time, company that with great speed and effectiveness solved my problem making possible the recovery of my hotmail. Also the Argentine company, via a telephone call, decided to immediately close down that account as an exception, due to the gravity of my denouncement , despite not belonging this account to my home address.

3. Finally, I do have a firm suspicion of whom particularly may have done this great damage directed specially to me, but at the same time destroying the life of so many others. Not counting on the sufficient proves and living according to the rule of law, I am myself forced to maintain the individual's name in anonymity. I am not the one to judge anyone, I leave this in God's hands.

MARIA BELEN CHAPUR

Poor lady. Wasn't her life awful enough for having merely fallen in love with a loser like Mark Freaking Sanford? And now she's being dragged through the American political muck, not to mention being exposed worldwide as a Hotmail user, to top it all off!

And oh yeah, here's Limbaugh explaining on his Friday show how Barack Obama's systematic dismantling of America as we know it drove Sanford to stick his conservative Republican wee-wee into Chapur's ladybox. And here we've been thinking that the time Limbaugh said that "exercise freaks" were to blame for America's healthcare problems was the dumbest thing he's ever said, but this may actually top it.

Argentine Admits Affair With S.C. Governor [MSNBC]
Vid via Media Matters