Wonkette

OH GOOD GOLLY: Ben Smith sez:”The McCain campaign’s new urgency about the financial crisis didn’t entirely clear his schedule this morning. My colleague Amie Parnes reports that he made it to his scheduled morning meeting with Lady Lynn de Rothschild, a Clinton backer who recently came out in support of him. All while Obama was waiting by the phone for a returned call.” Well the Rothschilds Control Everything, so he can’t very well cancel on their Lady. Or Katie Couric. Also: FIVE AND A HALF YEARS, AMIE PARNES. [Ben Smith]

• MICHAEL DUKAKIS IS IN THE TANK TOO: McCain strategist Steve Schmidt, who is Karl Rove’s actual bald son, spent all morning yelling at all reporters about how they’re “in the tank” for Barack Obama. And then Politico dominatrix Ben Smith asked the campaign to back up some of the claims Schmidt was making. And then McCain spokesman Brian Rogers e-mailed Smith back, “You are in the tank.” Ha. So Ben Smith naturally wrote a mean piece about the McCain campaign, because he is in the tank. [Politico]

Wonkette contextual advertising operative “Erin” sends us this Offensive screen shot from a Politico article by two of the publication’s four writers. Many have speculated that Politico harbors a right-wing bias, and this basically confirms it. They want someone to off Ol’ Yellow Tooth McCain after he’s in office so that a REAL CONSERVATIVE, Sarah Palin, can step in and make life terrible for everyone, again. [Politico]

Today your editor decided to “get serious” and go to a sober panel discussion, during the day, at the lovely Minnesota Public Radio building in downtown St. Paul. So many “famous” people were there! Jim VandeHei and Roger Simon of Politico, plus Nina Easton of FORTUNE and sometimes Fox News, and also Catalina Camia of USA Today and most famously, Mark McKinnon, who used to work on John McCain’s campaign until he quit because of his Loyalty Oath to Barack Obama. MORE »

MOST IMPORTANT POLITICAL STORY OF OUR LIVES: “The website Wonkette might have something to do with the proliferation of hoax messages. At 2:07 p.m. Wednesday, managing editor Ken Layne posted a step-by-step manual from a reader under the headline: Freak Out Your Friends With Fake Obama VP TXT. ‘We are proud to help cause confusion and excitement during this terrible boring week of no news at all,’ Layne wrote in an email to Politico.” [Politico]

COMMENTERS ARE RUINING THE WORLD: Not you people, of course. We mean everybody else. Here’s Daniel Libit’s Politico story about the Age of Wacky Commenters, featuring some friendly words from your editor. [Politico]

Here is 800-year-old columnist Bob Novak, the Last Scion of Bilbo Baggins, talking to the local teevee news after hitting some guy with his car and then speeding away, only to be captured. Isn’t it HMM COINCIDENTAL that a Politico reporter happened to be walking by the incident? Here’s the “new truth:” Politico and Bob Novak thought that this was Ron Paul, this pedestrian, and they were trying to kill him for the second day in a row. HE DOES NOT HAVE MUCH LONGER. DR PAUL ES MARTYR. [YouTube via Think Progress]

We were just enjoying this Politico story about how Matt Drudge hearts Barack Obama and this is Reason #2,098,388 why John McCain won’t be president. And then, just as we clicked for the next page, we had a brief glance at the world’s most insane, perfect blog comment in America’s long stupid history of blog comments. Really. Come see. MORE »

The Politico’s Democratic blogger Ben Smith is now simply “The Politico,” if this front page is any indication. Jesus, I know I’ve linked to him twice already today. And just who the hell does this “Carrie Budoff Brown” think she is, keeping a whole byline for herself? [Politico]

People who have no lives recently discovered that Michelle Obama’s senior thesis had been “withdrawn” from the Princeton library until after the general election. How peculiar, these same terrible people wondered. The wait, however, ended recently when the Obama campaign sent Politico a copy of the 1985 thesis, titled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.” From the excerpts Politico features, it seems like a brilliant, personal analysis of the struggle to preserve, or disregard, “black identity” in a largely conservative, white environment (Princeton). So what are the terrible ways that the Republicans will use this college paper during the general election? MORE »

This weekend, the Republican National Committee held its “winter retreat” in the woodlands of the Pacific coast, also known as Los Angeles’ Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Karl Rove was there, as was the guy who runs the RNC… [checks Wikipedia]… Robert Duncan. While they all agreed that Hillary Clinton would be easily beatable, because she’s a Rodham, they had fun devising “main strategic attacks” for a Barack Obama nomination. What five points did they outline in their Power Point presentation, and what does each mean? A Wonkette Chart(tm) explains all, after the jump. MORE »

*THAT CHELSEA IS GOING PLACES:* Mute mercenary-child Chelsea Clinton “has been calling uncommitted superdelegates to seek their support,” according to Politico’s Ben Smith. But is it for her mom’s campaign or her own planned run in 2024? I bet she’ll have all sorts of new tax credit micro-reform ideas by then! It’s the Clinton Way(TM). [Ben Smith]

… but not to a candidate. Gotcha! Instead he endorsed gay marriage, or announced he supports it, or however you say it. All of a sudden those jokes about Gore being a big gay man from like, what, 1999, are coming back. So here’s a perfunctory “Hey, look how gay Al Gore is” line. Anyway, when are we getting that hyped candidate endorsement, big guy? [Politico]

WELCOME TO MY HOME PAGE: Happy First Birthday, The Politico! (And next time you put up a front-page link celebrating how web-savvy you are, maybe you could warn us that “html” page is secretly a giant PDF file that’s going to open up Adobe Reader and maybe crash our browser. Thanks!)