Wonkette

Attention, Poughkeepsie, New York: Vice President Dick Cheney is coming to town, and he will be armed. I repeat: HE WILL BE ARMED. We know he will be hunting, but we don’t what he’ll be hunting. Consider yourselves warned.
Exclusive: Cheney to hunt in Dutchess County again {Poughkeepsie Journal]

* Heard on the Hill: It is possible to vaguely connect the death of Anna Nicole Smith to Congress. [Roll Call]
* Reliable Source: In what might be the single weirdest Reliable Source item we’ve ever seen, Amy and Roxanne uncover a heretofore unpublished love letter from Woodrow Wilson to his eventual wife. Woodrow signed it, “Tiger.” [WP]
* Yeas and Nays: Darrell Issa asked grieving widows testifying before Congress who wrote their opening statement… The National Association of Manufacturers accidentally scheduled their congressional reception on Valentine’s Day… Nancy Pelosi added the first anniversary of Dick Cheney shooting that guy to the calender she sent to Democrats last week. [Examiner]
* Washington Whispers: “Top secret” religious right group (members include Tim LaHaye and James Dobson) prefers Mike Huckabee to Mitt Romney 60-40. [USN&WR]

* Fresh Saddam Hussein execution video is head and shoulders above the rest. [The Jawa Report]
* DEA agents watch Training Day like it was a training video. [Talk Left]
* The New Republic is either stealing headlines from Comedy Central or just making up shit like they do. [Comedy Central Insider]
* Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to be a Zenataur. [Washington Whispers]
* Lisa Simpson does what Al Gore never could: be concise. [C&L]
* Barack Obama has begun preparations for 2008’s swimsuit competition. [Hotline on Call]
* Dick Cheney pulled his guns out of the ground, figures he can use them some more. [AP]

• Heard on the Hill: Dick Cheney made a funny about shooting Tim Russert in the face. He then repeated his funny to the Senate Republican Conference… The DNC had recruiters outside the Camelot strip club again. On 9/11, natch. [Roll Call]
• Yeas and Nays: Congressional Democrats won a golf tourney against Republicans for the first time ever…. Ken Burns will do a 9/11 documentary, but not any time soon. [Examiner]
• Reliable Source: Learn why the hell Tom Cruise was here. [WP]
• Page Six: Kitty Dukakis is about to publish a book touting the benefits of shock therapy. [NYP]

• Ned Lamont not dissimilar from another famous Lamont, have more than just selling junk in common. [Hot Johnny]

• Congressman Ralph Hall “loves bush” wants to “pull down his britches” and show him how much. [Pink Dome]
• Blair and Bush: one is working hard, the other’s hardly working. [ThinkProgress]
• Americans go AWOL in culture war. [The Carpetbagger Report]
• Deserters to form own Army whose central tenet is unwavering belief in all internet conspiracy theories. [Shakespeare's Sister]
• A double barreled shotgun: when you absolutely must shoot every motherfucker in the room, in the face. [Andrew Sullivan]
• ExxonMobil uses loser who lives in his parent’s basement as cover for their An Inconvenient Truth parody. [The Raw Story]

• The DCCC is so committed to the environment they’re recycling stock photos and a Bill Clinton quote for America’s “new direction.” [DCCC]

• Rahm Emanuel hates Blake Gottesman as much as you do. [K Street Blues]
• Also, just like you, Vladimir Putin thinks, “shot a man in the face,” is a punch line that doesn’t get old. [Mother Jones]
• Jon Stewart is unfazed by the possibility that expanding his empire will dilute the brand. [Gawker]
• Mark “Tool-y” is so far to the right he makes Genghis Kahn look like, “Ted Kennedy in a pot haze after a James Taylor concert.” [Evangelical Right]
• If “She-Jack’s” office was in a gilded crystal spire in the sky it would still feel like a dungeon. [The Hill]

Yes, we know all about the purported White House gossip posted over at Something Awful (and picked up by Daily Kos, among other places). We’ve known about if for a while now, but we’ve been holding off on doing anything with it because we can’t tell how much of it is factual and how much of it is satirical or apocryphal. Here at Wonkette, we’re all about factual accuracy.

But since so many of you have emailed us about it, we’ll blog about it, just to stem the flow of messages. In case you’re not familiar with it, Something Awful is a comedic community website, with a huge and intensely loyal message board community. Last week, a community member called “Martin Random” posted a long thread of what he called “Secrets from Inside the White House.”

Excerpts from the lengthy thread, accompanied by our comments, appear after the jump.

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The major question facing our nation today is not immigration or war or abortion or how those motherfucking snakes got on that motherfucking plane — no, it’s whether political cartoonists will ever stop making jokes about Dick Cheney shooting a guy in the face. Though, uh, it’s not much of a question, as our resident cartoon expert The Comics Curmudgeon learns this week — the answer is pretty plainly “no.”

Still, though, Today’s Cartoons just really want you to like them. All the cross-hatched bloodshed, after the jump.

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This Sunday’s shows undertook a major military operation. Between the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and “Operation Swarmer,” talking heads all but saluted. Russ Feingold managed to grab some of the spotlight, and his motion to censure President Bush gave Bill Kristol another chance to rock Chris Wallace’s world: Feingold “is smarter than the Democratic congressional leadership” and “deserves credit for taking a principled stand, and I honestly think he’s winning this debate.” That sound you heard is Nancy Pelosi’s head exploding. Dick Cheney did “Face the Nation” but did not make much news beyond the world’s most awesome Freudian slip: “Most of my predecessors spent a good part of their time as President–Vice President running for President.

Also, debuting this week on ABCNews.com was “The Green Room,” a brave attempt to wring every possible bit of hot air from the “This Week” panel while they stand around uncomfortably after the show wraps in the nondescript, motel-ish decor of ABC’s DeSale St. digs. Personally, I have always found pre-show green room chatter more interesting (everyone’s trying out their lines) and the whole thing strikes me as an empty attempt to show us another side of people who are basically one-dimensional, but I applaud this Taylorite approach to news content and hope that less practiced pundits do something stupid and/or inspired backstage in the future.

Top topics: Iraq, Feingold’s censure motion and by extension the NSA wiretap program.

One-hit wonders: Boston College’s Sweet Sixteen chances (”Meet the Press”); Joey Cheek, humanitarian (”This Week”); Mark McClellan, TREKKIE (”Fox News Sunday”)

Quotes to live by:
• Dick Cheney admits that shooting someone in the face is “one of those situations that’s difficult, that generates controversy.”
• Chris Wallace, SUPER GENIUS: “It seems to me that the Senators who are most critical of [the NSA wiretapping] program are the ones who know the least about it.”
• George Will lays it out: “We need to define victory down.”
• Sam Donaldson is totally high: “Russ Feingold threw the long ball… but it might connect, as the Washington Redskins learned in the mid-70s.”

Also, Shorter Chris Matthews Show: David Gregory observed that “George Bush is the George Clooney of Washington… but that’s a little bit of a patina.” Wha?

Full rundown appears after the jump.

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The issues facing the country and the body politic are, these days, distressingly non-visual. Which presents some challenges to our nation’s caroonists. How to depict the prospect of a showdown with Iran? The lobbying scandals? The political fallout of the ports deal?

As our resident cartoon expert the Comics Curmudgeon learned this week, you do it with jokes about Dick Cheney shooting a guy in the face! And references to the difficulties faced by pimps out here!

Our weekly roundup of the general suckiness of Today’s Cartoons, after the jump.

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