Wonkette

How did Hillary Clinton, who’s been locked in her Washington home on a barbiturate bender for the last 48 hours with the press clamoring at the gates, and Barack Obama, who commands an even larger, consolidated national press corps now, manage to meet privately (for hot bottled water) at that senator gal’s house last night? Easy! An unmarked van sneaked into Hillary’s side entrance (natch) and kidnapped her, while Obama took his reporters to the airport, locked them on a plane, and drove hastily to the meeting, where he violently ripped the duct tape from Hillary’s mouth and put her through bamboo-under-the-fingernails torture. And the press missed it! MORE »

This would be much funnier if he actually killed the White House press corps, but George W. had some “fun” yesterday by briefly acting like someone who worked for a living. Bush got on a tractor — we don’t know why he’s going to tractor factories, do you? — and solemnly putted around for a moment. MORE »

* When the FBI is doing some tapping, they lay “full pipe.” [CNET]
* President Bush bulldozes the press corps. [The Gaggle]
* National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq will be ready just as soon as Negroponte finishes the chapter entitled, “Why more troops would fix everything.” [TPM Muckraker]
* But he better not mention “global” or “warming” in the same sentence or Condi will bleach out his windpipe. [Think Progress]
* New White House pastry chef has experience making Desserts for Dummies. [Political Wire]
* During the next election, John Kerry may find that Massachusetts prefers a bloody sock to his bleeding heart. [Boston Herald]

Scotty McClellan is going out, as he came in, dealing with tough questions from our top-notch press corps. From today’s gaggle: MORE »

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We’re just a few days past the moment President Bush told the world that he would take responsibility for the “bad intelligence” that informed the decision to go to war with a nation that lacked the military capacity to boil water. The press’ chorus of hallelujah was predictably Handel-rific, and why not? After all, the President offered to do what the press was too perfumed and pussified to do — hold him to some modicum of accountability. It’s a new golden age! Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Oh, don’t worry your pretty little head about that. MORE »

The Washington Post ombudsman this week drew attention to the confusion some readers experience regarding Dan Froomkin’s “White House Briefing,” which is not actually written by someone officially covering the White House. Actual White House reporters were said to grumble as well, fretting that Froomkin’s left-of-center snark lost them points in the media-sensitive Bush administration; they’re already working out from under what’s known as the “Milbank deficit.” In today’s WashingtonPost.com chat, credentialed WP WH correspondent Peter Baker put things in perspective:

Austin, Tex.: I might as well ask (I’m sure you’re getting a lot of this) - but what is your take on Froomkin and his column? Do you get a lot of flak about it from peers and sources at the White House? Do White House staffers ever comment on his column to you?
Peter Baker: Can’t say any White House staffer has ever mentioned Dan’s column to me, at least not that I recall.

Oh no you didn’t! MORE »

The White House correspondents will get feted at the White House later this week, but all the sliced ham and swing bands in the world can’t make them any less surly. It’s a sucky job, someone has to do it, and it sucks even more someone sweeps in for a stunt-casting moment of glory, like Brian Williams did today. The blogging anchor has been in the WH basement trenches but, clearly, he was not eager to get back to his roots during the 12-hour rolling interview he conducted with Bush. Instead, according to our cranky eyewitness, Williams skipped “the rigorous Secret Service sweep (’hands out, turn around, cough’) that other trip-takers enjoyed in the luggage lounge by Gate 2″ and “did not sit with the other White House press corps cretins in the pod by the kitchen.” He did not gaggle, he did not “dine on an enormous muffin and a bottle of warm water.” Williams did drop names (”We took [a plane] like that to Bosnia. Had Albright, POTUS …”) and one curious fact:

During the mostly quiet ride, Williams at one point blurted out: “This city has the second highest number of single family dwellings in the country after Baltimore.” A wag said: “That’s a pick-up line I use all the time.” Again, silence.

Our special lump-of-coal operative expands on the day’s events after the jump.

The Daily Nightly

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A Wonkette operative on the scene sums up the President’s latest Iraq speech (number three for those keeping count):

Real news:
• estimates that 30,000 Iraqis have been killed since March 2003 “incursion” (but, but, I thought it was “liberation”???)
• condemns torture of Sunnis in secret Iraqi prisons (that’s our job!) MORE »

A reader writes in to alert us to some truly impressive sycophantic gymnastics in today’s Note. This massive, gaping suckfest jimmies four distinct feints of flattery into one apparently prosaic event listing:

Tomorrow, Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy and the Center for New York City Affairs and its Dean Fred Hochberg play hosts to a star-studded post-election roundtable exploring the 2005 New York City mayoral election with that perfect 20/20 hindsight. ABC’s Mark Halperin moderates the discussion which will occur in two pieces — the primary and the general — and include campaign operatives and strategists from each of the campaigns as well as members from the New York City political press corps who covered the race.

We fell asleep after “roundtable” until the wooshing sound of someone sticking their nose into at least four separate behinds woke us. Those being flattered include: New School prez Bob Kerrey, Fred “Who?” Hochberg, Hochberg’s circle of fundraisers, and, er, “ABC’s Mark Halperin.” And we thought the press just gazed into their own navels. MORE »