Wonkette

The congressman with the best accent since Jackie Gleason has encountered a number of ethics problems lately, related to his reluctance to pay for basic necessities and his willingness to take money from anyone for anything. Anyhow, he has a 1972 Mercedes Benz, and it has been sitting with an expired registration in some indoor House of Representatives lot, and it got towed. Charlie Rangel is awesome in so, so many ways. [CBS]

• McCain, in his big speech last night, vowed to end “partisan rancor.” He made this clear by using the word “fight” 43 times, literally. [New York Times]
• St. Paul police arrested 250 anti-war protestors — filled, presumably, with now-illegal Partisan Rancor — before McCain’s acceptance speech. [St. Paul Star Tribune]
• Bob Woodward’s new book alleges that the US spied on the Iraqi Prime Minister and asserts that the Surge didn’t work. Why would Bob Woodward rather win the election than lose the war? [Washington Post]
• Charles Rangel failed to report the $75k he earned from renting out his $500/night lush Dominican villa. [New York Times]
• Dick Cheney promised Georgia it would someday be included in NATO, and threw Ukraine in there too while he was at it. [Los Angeles Times]
  
• McCain and Obama are tied in the mostly meaningless national polls. [Politico]
  
• Ike and Hanna are not the last of the summer’s terrible hurricanes, in fact, hurricane season might last until October-ish. [Tampa Bay Tribune]

• “Love and affection doesn’t have a damn thing to do with counting votes.”
• “We pledged to support her to the end. Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.”
• “Unless she has some good reasons — which I can’t think of — I really think we ought to get on with endorsements (of Obama) and dealing with what we have to deal with … so we can move forward.”
• And this old chestnut, which has nothing to do with the candidates, but is funny: “Who the hell wants to live in Mississippi?”

No, that’s not Wonkette standing behind Joe Pantoliano. [WP/Lucian Perkins]

Truth be told, our night wasn’t that wild — more like reading Emily Dickinson than hanging out with Paris Hilton. But at least we got out of the apartment!

Last night, Wonkette (or one-half of Wonkette — the half of us with a tux) attended the Congressional Correspondents dinner, sponsored by the Washington Press Foundation. The swanky, black-tie event, held at the Ritz-Carlton on M Street, was attended by numerous “famous-for-D.C.” types, and even a few “famous-for-famous” folks — like Fran Drescher!

Slate described the event as “a B-list affair compared with the Gridiron and White House Correspondents Association dinners”; but we still had ourselves a jolly good time. Although Marcia Davis of the Post urged them not to give up their day jobs, the dinner speakers — Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) — were actually pretty funny. But our assessment may have been colored by the “soft bigotry of low expectations” — as well as too much red wine…

Of course, copious consumption of booze helped us through the evening. And did we mention that The Nanny was in the house?

Our detailed coverage appears after the jump.

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