Wonkette

As a presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee had no money, staff, or knowledge of foreign policy. He did have an economic policy, but it was the Fair Tax, that famously comical pyramid scheme. So how did he get the second most delegates? Metaphors. Extended metaphors. Millions of extended metaphors about key lime pie and yard work and skinning ducks, or other archetypal aspects of the Average American’s daily life. And now that he wants to be John McCain’s vice president, he has a new metaphor to explain the situation: he wants the football captain to ask him to prom, mostly because he wants to wear a pretty dress. MORE »

So did everyone else have a good time at the party? Huh? MORE »

Here, at long last, are your pictures from the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Thrill to Newt Gingrich, Morgan Fairchild, Michael Bloomberg, Eliot Spitzer, Mitt Romney, Tim Gunn, and the usual gang of idiots who are at this shitshow every year. MORE »

Anderson Cooper recently delivered the Class Day speech at Yale. Here’s the money quote: MORE »

* CIA Director Porter Goss called it quits this week, and didn’t make up a reason for leaving. Not even the standard “time with my family” excuse, which of course makes us think it had something to do with the hookers or the gambling and payola. Anyway, he’s back on the gulf shore already, and everyone is waiting to hear who the next shady character to take over the job is going to be. MORE »

How you like that? We show a bunch of smarmy New Yorkers nothing but hospitality, and how do they repay us? By running three smarmy pieces about how lame our big party was on Saturday in their smarmiest and most financially unstable paper. Sure, we love the attention, but the Observer seems to be acting all superior to us just because they’re skinnier and dress better.

First off, Chris Lehmann’s review of the Prom reception, dinner, and afterparty. We remember him skulking around Bloomberg — seemed like a shifty and untrustworthy sort. But this anecdote rings true to us:

The day’s festivities stretched all the way back to noon, with the kickoff brunch hosted by MSNBC producer Tammy Haddad. The defining moment of that event was the arrival of former Niger Ambassador Joe Wilson, husband of C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame. He walked up Ms. Haddad’s slate sidewalk in D.C.’s swank Palisades neighborhood; he sported a Palm Beach-style untucked Hawaiian shirt and brandished a cigar. He approached the tent where D.C.’s various media personages, pols and celebrity-esque hangers-on congregated.

Mr. Wilson took a quick, disenchanted look at his lit stogie and tossed it into Ms. Haddad’s flowerbed.

It wasn’t a gesture of confrontation so much as simple ambient sourness. But it served as another signature moment, six years into a flailing Bush Presidency, where the Washington zeitgeist might best be summed up in two words: “Fuck it.”

Hell, we’ll agree with that. We’re pretty sure the only person in Washington who still likes their job is Patrick Fitzgerald.

After the jump, the assault continues with a knock on our style and a trip to an Adams-Morgan Young Republican party.

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Shortly after the picture was taken, with a brief whisper from Mr. Secretary, Patrick Gavin developed an uncontrollable desire to secretly bomb some southeast Asians. MORE »

Here is all the money that’s not being spent on hiring more reporters.

The afterparty report, drunker and therefore more hazily-recalled than the pre-party report, but full of glorious Liz Gorman photography, is yours for the taking, after the jump.

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Photos, as always, by Liz Gorman.

We figured it out: if one open bar = good Washington party, an endless succession of open bars over the course of the entire night = the best Washington party. The rest of it’s just window dressing. Trust us.

Having clipped on our bow tie and slipped into our scuffed patent leather shoes, we went down to the Hilton a little after 6. The red carpet was out, with camera crews set up on one side and a couple dozen disposable camera-wielding gawkers behind a vinyl barrier. If they had bothered to rent a tux, they could’ve just sidestepped the divider and sauntered on into the receptions, as no one bothers to check names until the dinner actually starts. Once we got past the bank of photogs, we were confronted by the black-clad Reuters models for the first of what would be many times — eager to generate a little last-minute buzz, they’d decked out a couple models in black Reuters t-shirts and armed them with drink menus (as seen here last week). That might’ve been a bit too tacky for the crowd, as we can’t remember if anyone we know actually went to the Reuters “mixology lab” or whatever the hell it was called. The full reception report, after the jump.

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