Paul Bremer gets chicks by saying he’ll do to them what he did to Iraq, John Boehner wants to learn the technique, Michele Bachmann might have already, Ricky Martin’s feeling gay, Teri Hatcher seems to be alive, and bon soir to leftist cartoon Howard Dean.

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Paul Bremer and Dennis Kucinich are totally deluded, Patrick McHenry and George Will are likely quaaluded, David Wu and Bradley Whitford are enrapt, and Helen Thomas is trapped — going to the same restaurants she’s been going to since her 60’s, or the 60’s, whichever.

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It was like the Berlin Air Lift, but we sent planeloads of money instead of food. And it went to Iraq, where it all vanished. And the three massive cash shipments (in December 2003 and June 2004) were the largest transfers of cash money in the history of the U.S. Federal Reserve — some 363 tons of American dollars were stacked on wooden pallets and forklifted into cargo planes. The mafia could only dream of this shit! MORE »

The pointing and the thumbs-up and all the usual crazy-man hand gestures Rumsfeld performs whenever he drops in on Iraq?

Deeply offensive and vulgar displays, no different from flipping the bird or “the shocker.”

That’s what U.S. troops are now learning before they’re sent to Iraq, the Marine Corps Times reveals this week. Dirty details are after the jump.

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• Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) claims to have over 100 of the 116 votes necessary to be majority leader. [WP]
• Bush visits the Gulf Coast for the first time in three months: “Four months is not all that long, and a lot’s happened in that four-month period. And a lot more is going to happen in the next four months, and then the next four months.” [WP, NYT, W$J]
• Leadership races “are a special kind of art form”; Reps. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Blunt “barely waited for the ink to dry on DeLay’s farewell letter earlier this month before jumping into the race for the second-ranking job.” [WP]
• Administration may set standards for domestic intelligence. [WP]
• Deficit could top $400b, White House official says. [WP, NYT]
• Rumsfeld considered Bremer’s request for additional troops. [WP]
• 200 private school girls rally to encourage Bush to improve New Orleans levees. [NYT]

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The Food section of the WaPo, usually home to dozens of recipes for zucchini and items on where to buy adorable kitchen magnets, contains a truly revelatory story today, disclosing the serious chef side of Iraq reconstruction czar L. Paul Bremer. He is classically trained, having studied at L’Academie de Cuisine and under Henri-Etienne Levy. He tells the post that a La Cornue range in his Vermont home “was an important part of my sanity” while in Baghdad and that he kept a picture of it on his computer desktop. The man could not wait to get home to his stove. Relationship with Mrs. Bremer apparently not so hot. MORE »