Tonight through Sunday, August 30: Not that we haven’t already told you 1,000 times, but it’s (still) restaurant week! And it will even be Restaurant Week next week too. Make a reservation, eat a meal for $35.09, plus tax and gratuity and drinks (which some would argue is a rip-off), and feel like a real Washingtonian, because eating prix fixe meals is what we do. [Restaurant Week]
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• Whether he was clearing brush at his ranch or choking on a pretzel, George Bush was known to sport his silkiest ascot, his most posh plaid cummerbund. Say what you will, but the man was a snappy dresser. And Barack Obama? He prefers “Islamo-fascist business casual.” [Think Progress]
• This is a story about compassion, a story about reaching out, and helping a stranger in need. This is a story about a Californian squirrel, who received the best neurosurgery Californian IOUs could buy. [True/Slant: Matthew Fleischer]
• David Sedaris recalls all the delicious opiate cocktails he was given, for free (!), when he lived in Paris. [AMERICAblog]
• Mr. President: Coddling NASCAR drivers won’t change the fact that you are Adolf Hitler. [The Caucus]
• Your average Scotsman clocks in at about 6′9, weighs 350 pounds, has a beard on every part of his body, carries a fucking dagger in his sock — a “dirk” — and basically doesn’t take shit, from anybody. After all, Scotland’s national sport is “Who can throw this log the farthest?” (In the winter it’s “Who can push this rock real good, with a broom?”) But the real magic of Scotland is that it’s also a sensitive, tender country. And the Weekly Standard just can’t handle that. [Weekly Standard]

Couch-bound American sweatpants-wearers love to smell their own farts and follow the fashion adventures of their First Lady, which is why they love Nancy Reagan and Michelle Obama equally. Laura Bush? Whatever, she just walked around in stiff light-blue suits all the time so PASS. Anyway, First Lady lovers (like Mr. T, left) will be sure to follow today and tomorrow’s activities at the White House very closely. MORE »

Ha ha George Will: “Today it is silly for Americans whose closest approximation of physical labor consists of loading their bags of clubs into golf carts to go around in public dressed for driving steers up the Chisholm Trail to the railhead in Abilene.” It’s funny because it’s sort of true! We are a nation of wretched cowboy slobs. MORE »

Barack Obama, he’s a pretty hot ticket, right? Looks pretty good in clothes? Doesn’t wear his suits all back on his shoulders so that there’s this awful two-inch gap between the back of his neck and his collar like George Bush always did? Wrong. Famous DC tailor George de Paris says that Obama wears cheap suits and looks like a goon. Monseiur de Paris will fix this, though, by making him a $3500 suit, like he makes for all the presidents. WHEEEEE. [Vanity Fair]

This is quite the lofty statement coming from a town that has the highest number of women who still wear socks and sneakers with their skirt suits and nude pantyhose-post Working Girl: This week is DC Fashion Week, featuring top international designers not from France or Italy, but Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Uzbekistan. MORE »

Barack Obama has no respect for the traditions of the presidency, which is why he doesn’t always wear a jacket in the Oval Office. In other words, our old buttoned-up White House has become a thriving third-world Hawaiian slum where everybody wears floral muumuus and walks around with fat spliffs in their fists. George W. Bush is rolling in his grave. MORE »

Garbage queen Sarah Palin outraged all of America with her extravagant purchases of royal garments during her short, embarrassing reign as a vice presidential candidate. OK to be fair Sarah Palin did not actually buy the clothes; that was the fault of the evil Republican National Committee, who wanted to make her look like a spendy fashion whore who delighted in wasting people’s campaign contributions on fancy designer suits she never wore while jabbering endlessly about old-fashioned American values. The point is, all these clothes are now sitting in trash bags at RNC headquarters in Washington, which is a National Shame. MORE »

Cast your mind back to late October, when $150,000 still seemed like a lot of money. That’s how much the Republican National Committee reported it had spent to date on Sarah Palin’s silken royal costumes and tastefully selected haute couture for her rapidly multiplying hillbilly brood. It turns out that, in the final tally, the RNC did not spend 150K after all — they spent $30,000 more than that. MORE »

The Republican equivalent of being sent to the gulag is babysitting Sarah Palin, and this thankless task has fallen to former Bush staffer and current McCain employee Nicolle Wallace. What unspeakable sin did Wallace commit in order to be saddled with this terrible burden? Only History will tell. But for now she insists it is awesome to hang out with Sarah Palin all the time, and also she did not buy her all those clothes like Fred Barnes said she did. MORE »

The right wing hasn’t been able to fully brand Obama as a GAY yet, as they did to John Kerry (Gay Trademark: being French) and Al Gore (Gay Trademark: fucking dudes). But Obama’s trying to help them out with his new online store section called “Runway to Change,” which features fancy clothes from elitist fashion designers that you can buy for only… uh oh, they don’t even list the prices on the front page! What is this, RUSSIA? Never a good sign, like when you want to order lobster at a rich person’s restaurant and the menu says “Market Price,” which is a plutocrat’s term for “go away, rat hobo.” MORE »