Yesterday, your Jim Newell announced DC’s gay-marriage-is-okay news with this caveat: “HOWEVER, while Father Congress is not expected to go all ‘Home Rule’ and block this sucker, we’re about 99.9% sure that one congressman or another representing some salty swamp in the middle of nowhere will make a half-assed attempt to ruin this, score a few points with the folks back home, etc.” Hmm, “salty swamp in the middle of nowhere,” where could that be? MORE »

• 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]

Former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who one time — for fun — let a black inmate run free so as to rape the white ladies, could be the next fake Ted Kennedy, for a few months! He is “the name most prominently mentioned” appointee for Gov. Deval Patrick, who awaits a bill allowing him to do this, which is being debated in the House today. This is big news, because most people had just assumed Michael Dukakis was dead. [Washington Post]

• PAT BUCHANAN URGES MORE RACISM AGAINST SOTOMAYOR: Former Nixon racism strategist Pat Buchanan does not understand why a few of these current Republican leaders continually reject the obvious political benefits of just being completely racist all the time: “Had McCain been willing to drape Jeremiah Wright around the neck of Barack Obama, as Lee Atwater draped Willie Horton around the neck of Michael Dukakis, the mainstream media might have howled. And McCain might be president.” [Human Events]

America never really had an occasion to think about Michael Dukakis for about oh TWENTY YEARS until he showed up in a nice NYT graphic yesterday proving, conclusively, that he could never have defeated George H.W. Bush in an election because he was half a foot shorter. Dukakis was a hilarious failure of a candidate, and now he says the Obama campaign is doing better than his did, which is a true and obvious statement. MORE »

• Obama wants to put every American in jail, with the possible exception of Bill Ayers. [RedState]
• Oh look, it’s Michael Dukakis, joining us from god knows where to apologize for the last two decades. [Andrew Sullivan]
• Obama is unfit to be President because Russia is much larger than Iran, according to geography. [Political Punch]
• David Paterson characterizes McCain with metaphors about not being able to see stuff well, which is humorous because Paterson is blind. [City Room]
• In this place called “Snohomish County,” some Republican distributed $3 bills that featured Obama in Arab headgear and the traditional Muslim car, the camel. [Fresh Intelligence]
• That world famous “Yes We Can” video will be recreated live, sort of, the night Obama accepts the nomination. [Political Ticker]

Beloved 1988 Dem nominee Michael Dukakis was such a crappy candidate that he lost to despised vice president George Bush, so now he’s warning America that the Republicans will still figure out a way to keep the White House beyond 2008, even though everybody hates the Republicans and all the GOP candidates and especially Bush Junior and Dick Cheney. MORE »

Of Northeastern University, that is. Yesterday we passed along the rumor that Gore was on the shortlist for the presidency of Northeastern. But it now seems that they’ve given the job to a linguist with more vowels in his last name. MORE »

Our second to last Wonk’d of the slow season. Please keep collecting the lamest excuses for “famous” that you can — and remember, we’re including famous-for-DC outside of DC — and send them to . In this issue, an actually rather impressive-for-August number of sightings of famous-for-DC, including lots of generals (Clark, Meyers, McCaffrey), George Will hyping and diving, Tucker Carlson at McDonald’s, Leahy, Dukakis, Coulter, Baldridge, Koppel, Chertoff, Woodruff, Kerry, McClellan, Pennington, Clinton, Obama, King, Sharpton, Gannon, Hunt.

They’re all after the jump.

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