Ha ha, Michael Dukakis loses again. This bro, former DNC chair Paul Kirk, was more or less picked by the Kennedy family. “Deval, darling, appoint this human, we used to summer together,” Vicki Kennedy urged the Governor of Massachusetts. But it was probably a good pick, because Kirk is familiar with Ted Kennedy’s staff and might actually have some sense of what the hell he’s doing. Oh golly. Check out John Kerry in the video! What a SEVERE couple these two will make, in the Senate. [NYT, YouTube]

• MASS. SENATE PASSES ‘TED KENNEDY MEMORIAL PARTISAN WARM-BODY ACT,’ HOORAY! Oh good, now Gov. Deval Patrick should be able to sign this quick fixeroo tomorrow and Michael Dukakis or whoever can putz around Washington for a few months, casting a crucial vote or two occasionally. Also, pundits can stop saying, “But the Democrats only have 59 seats, they need Olympia Snowe!!!” because it is not true anymore. No one needs Olympia Snowe! NO ONE! [Boston Globe]

Now that the question of what to do about Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat is no longer an academic one, folks in Boston seem to be giving the issue a little re-think. Remember Kennedy wrote to the governor recently asking him if he couldn’t perhaps do something about that terrible law Democrats passed in 2004, the one that called for a special election in the event of a Senate vacancy FIVE MONTHS after the seat first opened? That got everybody so steamed … MORE »

Look everybody, it’s your new failed Commerce Secretary nominee, Gary Locke. At least that’s what the reporters are saying! He is what the AP terms a “Chinese-American,” which could mean anything. He was the first “Chinese-American” governor of Washington, the state, from 1997 to 2005. So why will he have to withdraw? Eh, who knows, the AP is going insane about some campaign contribution controversy from back in the day. Meh. All we know is that when you google-image his name, you get not only the accompanying picture but a mirror image of it too in the first handful of results. Is Gary Locke a witch? [AP]

Just nine and a half months ago, everybody loved David Paterson for being everything that Eliot Spitzer was not. Instead of a terse, sanctimonious Captain America who kept his socks on when he furtively humped hookers, Paterson was an affable, self-deprecating, pleasant gentleman who managed to persuade a woman who was not his wife to have sex with him for free. Also he was sort of America’s first blind governor, which was cute. MORE »

Yay a new era has dawned in Washington, bipartisanship forever, etc! After Barack Obama’s pudgy comic foil had to renounce the Latino Consolation Prize due to a corruption investigation, people wondered who could possibly replace Bill Richardson. And then the name “Judd Gregg” was floated, and people said, “well, he was pretty good in Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” plus he was a Republican, which meant that sneaky Barack Obama could get Gregg’s Democratic governor to appoint a Democrat to replace him in the Senate without a single Republican noticing! MORE »

Did you hear about how Barack Obama might appoint a Republican senator to Commerce Secretary? Such brilliance and political genius! It has never occurred to another human on the planet, ever, that some political advantage might be gained by eliminating an opposition-party Senate seat from a state controlled by a sympathetic governor. MORE »

Hey Obama waited until the last minute to pick a surgeon general, the government’s top doctor! SHIT SHIT SHIT who should he pick?? Uh uh uhhhhhh… quick, without even thinking: name a famous real-life teevee doctor! Him? Sure, fine, whatever, he can run America’s doctors. MORE »

Remember how everybody got all excited at the thought of a lesbian running the Labor Department? Well, that didn’t happen — instead some boring straight lady who at least had the decency to be a Latina was appointed. So where are all the gays in Obama’s grand new rainbow government of change? Now we have our answer: managing the secretarial pool. MORE »

Blago, he’s good today. He set up this press conference to announce his surprise Senate pick, and here he is, dressed to the nines, punctual, grinning, even rattling off a few well-turned sentences in Mexican. He knows he’s politically outmaneuvered Harry Reid, which is perhaps the easiest achievement known to man, but still: “Blagojevich’s news conference came less than an hour after U.S. Senate Democratic leadership issued a statement saying the Senate will not seat anyone the governor chooses to fill Illinois’ vacant Senate post.” O RLY, Democratic leadership? You’re going to REFUSE this nice, experienced, elderly black gentleman a legally valid seat in the Senate? Ha ha, no you won’t! MORE »

Jeez, who’s running this government anyhow? Given his latest string of appointments, it appears Barack Obama favors Indonesian Socialist pansexual witch-doctors such as Tom Daschle and Tim Geithner. This leaves little room for Obama to install in key positions such competent Southerners as … well shit, are there even any Southern Democrats alive anymore? Or are they like the ivory-billed woodpecker, another mythical Southern rarity? MORE »