Wonkette

Meet Chris Peden, a Republican accountant and small-town Texas councilman. If all goes well, on March 4 this charming young conservative is going to kick Ron Paul out of Congress. Wonkette went to the Katy Area Republicans meeting Tuesday night to speak to Chris Peden in the flesh and bring you this EXCLUSIVE and GROUNDBREAKING interview with Texas Congressional District 14’s last best hope for vanquishing the Paultards now and forever. MORE »

I would try to summarize this in some fashion, but I am left only with a few stunned impressions. They include: Randy Newman looks like hell; I would not let Randy Newman near my children if I had any; his little ditty piano style seems somehow incredibly wrong for a song that compares our country to Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia and Europe in the time of the Inquisition; and that this is the sort of thing that makes liberals look bad. He performed this at some conference for Mac heads, which makes it all the more befuddling. I think the drinking should’ve started earlier tonight.

Former State Senator Jackie Speier made official yesterday what had already been assumed: she’s running for Congress again. Accompanied by Congress members Anna Eshoo and Mike Thompson to a park named after her assassinated boss Congressman Leo Ryan, Speier announced that she was officially in the “race” for the seat that the cancer-stricken Lantos will vacate at the end of 2008. She’s already lined up endorsements from 93 other elected officials, including San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom. I guess he got engaged to run for a different higher office. [CQ Politics]

Who here uses Facebook? Uh huh, that’s what I thought, pretty much all of you. Guess what? You’re all going to fucking die. Or that’s what The Nation says in an article they just posted, and kudos to them for getting a whole issue to press the night of their Christmas party. Double kudos for showing me such a good time and not skimping on the booze. As a result, I almost feel bad about what I’m about to do. But, hey, my people did kill Christ so that really says something about my Christmas spirit. Anywho, we’ll take a look at The Nation’s paranoid schizophrenic Facebook-as-Fascism story and explain why it’s, well, retarded, right after the jump. MORE »

Last week, your editors were offered the opportunity to interview someone at YouTube about tonight’s debate and “YouTube’s impact on the overall debate and political process” which is all so totally like “real” journalism that it naturally fell to the newest and least journalisty Wonketteer. And, that lack of experience is why I had no idea until 5 minutes ago when trying to find a picture of Steve Grove, YouTube’s, uh, “Head” of News & Politics that he was OMG smoking hot [courtesy of Martha Rial at the St. Petersburg Times]. Oh, and he was smart and said smart things which I wrote down and, boy am I glad I didn’t actually have any idea that this was who I was talking to because I probably would’ve sounded even dumber. That stuff, and Wonkette’s other alcohol-inspired YouTube debate question are after the jump.

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What better way to talk about your tech feelings than to get folksy with the people at Google? Sen. Barack Obama did just that, probably expecting some softballs from awestruck geeks. Nope. They were ready and waiting with questions. Good, tough questions like “What have you learned from Clinton that is going to make you win?” and “What have you learned from Gore and Kerry and all those guys that you’re going to avoid, so that history doesn’t recur?” MORE »

Clinton strategist and Coke fiend Mark Penn is hard at work trying to throw Clinton’s campaign off the rails. Recent comments dissing 18-year-olds have triggered an “Official Petition Against Hillary Clinton” on Facebook.com. “That’s it: Hillary’s entire strategy for winning the White House is to make sure young people on Facebook don’t vote,” the group’s manifesto states. MORE »

Bush strategist Karl Rove emerged from his isolation tank last week, and magically appeared at the Willard InterContinental Washington to discuss the crossroads of tech and politics. “One of Rove’s main points — that the Internet creates a dangerous society of spectacle where every political moment is recorded for instant consumption and critique — was realized as audience members live-blogged, Twittered, and took photos for instant proliferation throughout the Web.
” After the jump, The Washingtonian reports on what Rove says really happens when the Internet meets politics:
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Barack Obama set himself up a Flickr account recently, so all the cat lovers, perverts, and Photoshop-abusing goths could look at dozens upon dozens of nearly-identical photos of Barry addressing crowds in his shirtsleeves or Tracee Ellis Ross posing with unidentified people for some reason. And today, whatever poor staffer was in charge of the photostream uploaded a set featuring the wedding of some random, non-Obama people, as well as a cute picture of a dog and a baby. Whoops! It’s all been up for a couple hours now and no one’s noticed, except the Flickr commenters who pretty much always show up to note that every fucking dog (or baby) is soooooo adorable.

Barack Obama’s Photos [Flickr]

* Vice President Cheney will receive a warning citation for hunting without the proper stamp on his permit. [The Smoking Gun] MORE »