We normally don't even try to involve ourselves in "real" political stories. We're happy to let Mike, Jeff, Nedra, et. al. do all the work; we're happy to sit in the corner and play with John Kerry's penis. But it falls to us to point out that there is no way Gephardt can be Kerry's veep pick. Sure, the Browless Wonder is the odds-on favorite at Americasline.com (5-to-1) and Tradesports.com has him ticking up 5 points. . . but his daughter is running for pretend president on a reality television show.
Variety doesn't shy away from the shocking headlines:
Clinton says he had affair with Lewinsky "just because I could" [AFP]
Clinton blows his own horn [Variety/Yahoo]
Revisiting our recent call to play the Feud with Peggy Noonan's blind-item driven Reagan reminiscence: We love it that you people are sending us nominations for the identity of Noonan's "Haircut Boy" without us even asking! You are so motivated! (Or so unemployed!) Almost everyone that chose to participate in this bonus round nominated Peter Robinson, the author of "How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life" and a contributor to the National Review's group blorgy, The Corner.
[more...]White House spokesperson faced another rather contentious press briefing yesterday, as reporters kept picking at the question of a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. It's like they think poking a hole in that story would unravel the administration's justification for sending hundreds of American soldiers to die or something.
Some highlights:
MR. McCLELLAN:Well -- and we never said that there was operational ties involved in attacks on the United States. Let's be very clear about that. The President talked about that just a short time ago.[more...]
Q: What are people supposed to conclude, that they're having lunch with each other?
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· Remainders: Sony Reportedly Completes Buy of MGM 
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Sightings of George Stephanopoulos, straight-edge punk rockers, sex blog authors, and other famous-for-D.C. types are sent in by readers. Send yours to . In this issue: O'Donnell, Cheney, Wilson, Rivers, MacKaye, Stephanopoulos (x2), Couric, Glover, Hutchison, the Grateful Dead, Quayles, Bacon, Brokaw, Cutler, Crow, Armstrong, Nouri.
• NBC's Norah O'Donnell and her husband "Chef" Geoff whoever at Two Amy's pizza in Clevelend Park the other night. They managed to piss off a huge amount of people by obnoxiously cutting the long line. Plus, they were dressed ridiculously, Norah in these teeny-bopper white pants and pink shirt, and her husband in clashing striped colors. He looked like the end-of-season clearance rack at Ralph Lauren.
• I saw Lynne Cheney (without dear ol' Dick!) at St. Peter's Church at 2nd and C Streets, SE, on Sunday, 6/6. She was there for the 4:00 PM concert of the amazing Capitol Hill Chorale, which was performing with the Washington Saxophone Quartet. The Quartet is responsible for the famous "All Things Considered" theme song.
• Passed right by Owen Wilson today (June 7th) in the afternoon walking on M St. in Georgetown between Thomas Jefferson and 31st. He was smiling, I think in response to something a homeless man had just said to him. I looked back and he was standing in front of a building beside the Christiane Salon. When I looked back again he was gone. There are perks to working in Georgetown ....
• Names & Faces: Ron Reagan says his father would not want to be on currency. [Pub]
• Inside the Beltway: Talking points of Democratic congressmen call for probes of gas gouging and attacks on Republicans for being "in the pocket" of big oil. . . Love note to Kucinich: "Dennis, there are thousands of us that are in love with you and would give our left arm to have a few moments alone with you. That's our fantasy!... I was able to shake your hand. It was cold, which seemed impossible after such a fiery speech!". . . It only takes 10 seconds to pick a Diebold voting machine lock and remove its memory. [WT]
• Kerry consults friends, reviews history in VP selection process; Kerry is close to Gephardt, Vilsack, Biden, but "the delay in announcing someone has helped Edwards," says source. Clark, unity ticket unlikely Holbrooke: "John has foreign policy experience. He does not need a prime minister [like Cheney]." The Hotline: "If Edwards isn't picked, how does the Kerry camp handle that first-day story of snubbing" him? [WP and WSJ]
• Gephardt interrupts post-campaign calm to meet Kerry: "If John Kerry wants me to do something, including vice president, I will do it. But I'm very happy to do something else. My life is not all focused on government and public service." [NYT and LAT and BG]
We are nothing if not eventually responsive: Readers took umbrage with the assertion made Wednesday that Time magazine outed Dick Cheney's secure location. First, we'd like to note that it was Drudge who characterized the discovery as Time's. What's hilarious is that it's not the liberal media elite who put the vice president in danger, it's the New York Post (who ran a story a week before) and NewsMax.com, the official publication of Vince Foster's Army, who ran it in 2002. Well, that certainly puts a new spin on the quote Drudge passes on from "one White House Official," who told him that publishing the location of Cheney's bunker was the equivalent of "reveal[ing] the secret location of Anne Frank, if they knew it." See, while the Post and NewsMax might have revealed the location of Anne Frank, they would also support the president's attempt to link Anne Frank and al Qaeda.
Escape to Raven Rock [Wonkette]
Related:
This is an outrage! [Sadly, No]
SITE R arises again as a topic [Amygdala]
According to the 9/11 commission's statement released yesterday, it was Cheney who gave the order to shoot down civilian planes. Not that George Bush wasn't in complete control of the situation: "Cheney. . . told the commission he was operating on instructions from Bush given in a phone call." Though the evidence for this phone call are "incomplete," Bush and Cheney both "told the commission that they remember the phone call; the president said it reminded him of his time as a fighter pilot." Imagine Bush's surprise when he didn't get to take the next 11 months off.
Wonkette's weekly service to our readers: Translating Tina Brown's Thursday column in the Washington Post. We understand it so that you don't have to.
| Tina says | Tina means |
| There was such demand to get into a small screening at the Beekman Theatre on Monday night that executive producer and host Harvey Weinstein moved the celebrity crowd to the thousand-seat Ziegfeld Theatre. This was a canny PR move. | I am resisting the urge to comment on how we could have all fit into the Beekman if Harvey wasn't there. Lard ass. |
| There was only a one-week frenzy window between Gippermania and the pending Clinton memoir, and Weinstein flew right through it. | It was a really big window. |
| Attempted suppression is a promotional must these days. | CNBC is surpressing Topic A, everyone! Really! Free Topic A! Free Topic A! |
| The buzz is deafening. | I can no longer hear the voice in my head telling me to do bad things. |
| Weinstein had the wheeze of screening "Fahrenheit 9/11" with a different celebrity host virtually every night this week. . . | Sometimes I just replace words in a sentence with whatever sound I'm making at the time. |
From the "Ask the White House" with Mike Leavitt, head of the EPA:
Sick, from Maryland writes:That is beautiful. Perhaps Leavitt could help the rest of the administration accept decomposition as part of the "circle of life;" they're going to have to let go of Reagan's moldering corpse at some point.
My yard is full of hundreds of dead and dying cicadas. They are really starting to stink, especially with all the rain we've been getting. I would like to know if they pose any kind of environmental danger or threat to humans or animals.Mike Leavitt:
Are those things ugly or what? It's actually been a fascinating phenomenon. Like most people I've been reading articles on it. These flying insects spend most of their life underground and during the spring of the 13th or 17th year, depending on the species, emerge from the ground. They are not poisonous and will soon be gone. I’m told that their decomposition is part of a natural cycle and poses no threats to human or animal health. Isn't nature remarkable?
Ask the White House: Mike Leavitt [WhiteHouse.gov]
We've been getting some snippy emails from people who look at the romance between newly elected congressional hottie Stephanie Herseth (D-S.D.) and Texas Representative Max Sandlin (D) and see scandal. We quote: "Girrrrrrl, you have missed this one." This particular correspondent saw a parallel to a story about a certain DC intern who used sex as a career booster. Well, we see that parallel, too. Someone really should take Sandlin aside and explain to him that there are other ways of getting ahead besides putting out for a more glamorous media darling like Herseth. Really. He's tarnishing the reputation of House members -- who, as one senate staffer we know put it, "are like interns anyway."
If Sandlin really wants to make himself useful, he can go slap Denny Hastert around. Eyes back in sockets, Denny, please.
UPDATE: Yeah, yeah, so I put Hottie Herseth in the wrong house. Thanks to the kajillion of you who live to correct me. And, yes, the joke is less funny now that it's factually correct. This is why I hate facts. I'll be making shit up in the other room if you need me.
Rep. Herseth moves fast — a bit too fast [The Hill]
Sitting in a Tree [Roll Call]
At a brief press conference this morning, Bush reiterated the administration's position on who the enemies are in the war on terror: "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."
Well, at least he's right about the "Iraq and Saddam" part.
Bush Insists on Saddam Relationship with Al-Qaeda [Reuters]
Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed [WP]
Thanks to all those who played Page Six Family Feud, Wall Street Journal Edition. We said: Who is The Hack alluded to in Peggy Noonan's surprisingly bitter account of the Reagan funeral?
[more...]Wonkette's Department of Army operative sent along an email that went out last week to the personnel of the Information Management Support Center, who are apparently recruited from local kindergartens:
We treat others in our team as we wish to be treated. . . . Please say "please," "thank you," and "I'm sorry" when appropriate. These are things our mothers taught us, but they seem to be missing in the work place. No one is right all the time. . . When you are wrong. don't try to bluff your way out. Just say "I'm sorry, I was wrong on that."Isn't there was some kind of Geneva Convention thingee against child soldiers? Guess Rumsfeld didn't get that memo.
Full scolding after the jump.
[more...]• Reliable Source: Angelina Jolie: "I'm the most tattooed person probably in Washington.". . . Reagan more likely to get a coin than D.C. . . . McAuliffe buys the Cheneys a drink. . . Jim Wilkinson and Chris Heinz make People's "50 Hottest Bachelors." [WP]
• Under the Dome: Preparations for Clinton mania. . . Weldon didn't know of Herseth. . . McCullough penning book on Washington for spring. [The Hill]
• Heard on the Hill: Pair of Hill staffers participate on "Trading Spaces". . . Capitol building flags from Reagan funeral hit eBay. . . Menendez tells chatters to use "inside" voices. [Roll Call]
We'd like to remind everyone that tomorrow is Sports Jersey Day at MSNBC. Please do not forget to put a cover sheet on your TPS reports.
MSNBC memo on permissible wackiness after the jump.
[more...]
• Kerry has raised over $1 million a day since March 2, outpacing Bush nearly 2 to 1. Overall, Bush has $214 million, Kerry $145; GOP has a $153 million advantage with 527s. [WP and LAT]
• 9/11 Commission disputes ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Bad news for Bush? Not necessarily: "[T]he president is still even with John Kerry or, if you count the Electoral College votes in the battleground states, ahead. Then there's a creeping plus for George Bush, which is that the economy is taking off."[WT and NYT]
• Rumsfeld, Tenet hid detainees from Red Cross monitoring. [NYT]
AIM: tipwonk
"Swims in the libidinal current of American politics." [Village Voice]
"Profanity-laced and sex-obsessed...[a] vain, young, trash-mouthed skank." [Michelle Malkin]
"Gossipy, raunchy, potty-mouthed." [New York Times]
"Its like having a drunken, sometimes vicious gossip session
without the hangover." [Electric Venom]
"A foulmouthed, inaccurate, opinionated little vixen."
[Richard Leiby]
"Plying gossip above all, eschewing serious debates about politics and policy."
[The Nation]
"The newest, funnest blogger on the block" [Andrew Sullivan]
"Wonkette's arrival on the steps of the Capitol is a quiet victory for creeping National Enquirer values." [Christian Science Monitor]
"[H]er enthusiasm for penis jokes cannot be as great as her blog suggests"
[Jack Shafer]
"A pre-menopausal Lucianne Goldberg"
[Reason]
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