Wonkette

Welcome to the last night of this horrid week, which started with a hurricane and ends with an old man struggling to read a teleprompter — an American Journey, really. Anyway, your entire Wonkette Team is here, at the Xcel Center, just plain eatin’ sandwiches and typing, from tables on the Club Level (?), and we will liveblog things such as John McCain’s speech, or maybe we’ll just burst out of here with the usual disgust in about an hour, and blog from Liffey’s Pub, again & forever. Let’s glance over the Lindsey Graham and Tom Ridge speeches that are embargoed, okay? MORE »

Two things! Barack Obama will appear with his so-called “vice president” in Springfield, Illinois — where he started his campaign 20 years ago — on Saturday. Oh neat. Also, Mark Halperin hears that Tom Ridge is no longer a possibility for John McCain, probably because Tom Ridge kills babies. So the current veepstakes predictions stand, according to our Wonkette Maths, as (1) Biden (2) Bayh (3) Kaine for the Democrats and (1) Romney (2) Pawlenty (3) Lieberman for the Republicans. But watch out for surprises! Obama could pick a Balinese Cock, because he loves Balinese Cock. [Lynn Sweet, The Page]

Maverick John McCain is at it again, sticking his finger in the eye of the Republican establishment by saying he wouldn’t rule out a pro-choice running mate. Two names came to mind — Tom Ridge and Michael Bloomberg — and in a recent interview with the Weekly Standard McCain strained to point out that Ridge was far more appealing because he only loved abortions, not both abortions and The Gays. MORE »

While Barack Obama continues to putz around like a jerk on vacation in “exotic” Hawaii, John McCain has been campaigning across Pennsylvania with Tom Ridge, the guy who inexplicably decided he’d rather serve as George W. Bush’s powerless anti-terrorism bitch than remain a popular governor of a large state. Well, the Pennsylvanians are just loving this pair. They’re packing the crowds, chanting McCain’s name, you name it. And if you can even believe it, some teenage girls are waking up before dawn to get into McCain rallies. Hope is for dopes! All the kids talk about these days is that old Republican bastard, John McCain. MORE »

A week ago today, we bitterly presented the World’s Worst Wonk’d. The “D.C. celebrity sightings” consisted of George Will buying another fucking book at Borders, and a fireman who had once been on local teevee. We demanded that you people get it together, and you got it together! Huzzah for Wonkette Operatives! This week, Fred Thompson, Robert Mueller, Tom Ridge, Juan Williams, Marion Barry, Ben Bernanke, Ken Mehlman, Robert Novak, Dana Milbank, Mark Warner, and David Frum were all spotted being various degrees of famous at various places by our spies and operatives. The most voyeuristic fun ever in Wonkette’s Five Long Years of History, after the jump. MORE »

“Get out, kid. It’s not too late.”

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES of Lesley (daughter of Tom) Ridge’s wild, outta control graduation party at the White House! Which looks like it may have been attended by upwards of four people! (We don’t mean to judge too harshly — grad parties are just for your parents’ friends/bosses to give you cash and ask where you’re going to college, and we know that when we were that age, our more fun friends never woulda gotten past the security checkpoint, let alone into the East Wing)

Seriously, don’t let Laura Bush plan your graduation party. Though we’re sure she’ll cut you a pretty hefty check. Couple more photos (cause you know this shit’s getting deleted), after the jump.

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The next presidential election is still an eternity away, but it’s already an extremely popular topic of conversation — perhaps because it’s far more interesting than the day-to-day machinations of Congress. We’ve been hearing interesting rumors about possible 2008 contenders — and we’re not just talking about the quixotic candidacy of Mike Gravel (although the folks we’re hearing about now aren’t exactly frontrunners either). MORE »

Yes, we know all about the purported White House gossip posted over at Something Awful (and picked up by Daily Kos, among other places). We’ve known about if for a while now, but we’ve been holding off on doing anything with it because we can’t tell how much of it is factual and how much of it is satirical or apocryphal. Here at Wonkette, we’re all about factual accuracy.

But since so many of you have emailed us about it, we’ll blog about it, just to stem the flow of messages. In case you’re not familiar with it, Something Awful is a comedic community website, with a huge and intensely loyal message board community. Last week, a community member called “Martin Random” posted a long thread of what he called “Secrets from Inside the White House.”

Excerpts from the lengthy thread, accompanied by our comments, appear after the jump.

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• Former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) says Congress rejected White House request for the authority to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens: “I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.” [WP, WP]
• Congress has turned on Bush. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): “What you have seen is a Congress, which has been AWOL through intimidation or lack of unity, get off the sidelines and jump in with both feet.” [WP, LAT]
• Republican lawmakers “largely have themselves to blame for the muddled and haphazard finale of the Congressional session.” [NYT]
• House and Senate extend the Patriot Act for five weeks, pushing fight into the new year. [WP, NYT, LAT]
• Bush approves reduction of U.S. combat forces in Iraq; troop level could fall to 130,000. [WP, USAT]
• John Yoo, “a mere deputy assistant attorney general in the legal counsel office,” was the main author of controversial legal policies; viewed as an aggressive force among conservative legal scholars. Yoo: “If you’re being criticized for what you did and you believe that what you did was right, you shouldn’t take it lying down. You should go out and defend yourself.” [NYT]
• Michael Brown warned Tom Ridge in 2003 that the bureaucracy of the DHS would strangle FEMA’s effectiveness: “People became distracted from the mission, because we spent so much time and energy fighting for resources and working on reorganization. It just disintegrated our capacity.” [WP, WT]

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