Wonkette: The D.C. Gossip

Liberal Alaskan Laws Smear Sarah Palin

Jim Newell — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:37:30 +0000

So what’s the deal, is this gal a rotten crook? Will the Obama wolves throw her in the slammer with her corrupt robber friends? Lil’ impeachment action? We don’t know, you’ll have to ask Jeffrey Toobin or his rich lawyer commentator friends. The point: in 25 days, she’ll return to governing a state where everyone hates her slimy guts. [Anchorage Daily News, Report PDF]

Jim Newell — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:05:03 +0000

READ FASTER, YOU FILTHY BUMS: Hey, remember how the Troopergate report was supposed to come out today, and how it could be grand? Well there’s a slight technical problem in Alaska that’s causing some delay: illiteracy. You know, “not reading good.” These lawmaker fairies on a legislative council in Alaska are meeting to vote on whether or not to release the full 263-page report to the public, and they are taking their goddamn TIME parsing that thing. Surely there’s a Cliff’s Notes or something?? Just hurry, con sarn it. This Friday night news isn’t going to dump itself. UPDATE: “The Legislative Council just voted 12-0 to release the report, excerpt for certain parts they consider confidential.” And now we will wait another seventeen years for reporters to read it. [Anchorage Daily News]

Jim Newell — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:30:59 +0000

WALNUTS IS A HERO: Whoa hey John McCain decided to calm the lynch mob for the first time at a rally today: “I want everyone to be respectful. And let’s make sure we are, because that’s the way politics is done in America. I have to tell you, he is a decent person, a person that you do not have to be scared [of] as president of the United States.” (Because someone asked if they should be scared!) Good job and thank you, Walnuts. Watch out though! Now they’s a-coming for you, cuz you just called a terrorist a “decent person.” [The Page]

Colin Powell Testifies About Nude Hijinks With Ted Stevens

Sara K. Smith — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:33:03 +0000

Well “my friends” it is Friday and this is precisely the sort of headline that will either make people click the clicky to READ MORE or just go “ugh” and vomit quietly in their shoes. Because seriously who wants to know about Ted Stevens’ long love affair with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a man who has built a career defending the veracity and reputations of unreconstructed crooks?

Here is the deal: Ted Stevens is on trial for taking too many gifts from various Alaska people and not reporting them properly. He was allowed to call a few character witnesses, and one of them was Colin Powell, the once-honorable soldier who has been roundly discredited for staying in the Bush administration a million years too long.

Powell is apparently a great pal of Ted Stevens, because here is what he said about him:

“I had a guy who would tell me when I was off base, he would tell me when I had no clothes on, figuratively, that is, and would tell me when I was right and go for it.”

Powell also said Stevens had a “sterling” reputation. Then he leapt off the stand and presented Ted Stevens with a very special gift: a set of gold-plated anal beads to use on the thousand-dollar husky he had been given, for free, by some other dude.

Colin Powell: Stevens reputation ’sterling’ [Anchorage Daily News]

Jim Newell — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:07:56 +0000

GEORGE W. BUSH SAVES STOCK MARKET: The Dow only dropped 128 points today, which is the New Great Depression equivalent of rising 250 trillion points. Credit is still completely inaccessible, permanently, but what the hell do you people want anyway. [AP]

Peggy Noonan Dismayed By Manner In Which Political Consiglieri Comport Themselves!

Jim Newell — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:41:59 +0000

America’s arbitrarily reginal czarina of letterputtingtogether, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, is in a tit-bit of a snit! She refuses to deign either American candidate for Leader as possessing the requisite traits to divert the West’s neo-mercantilist econometric interplay system from almost certain gloom and/or “doom”! Tut tut, what rogues, what Beelzebubs of fiery pagan disposition, are suppressing the hare-like candor we should expect from our two applicants in an epoch of global Money Plague? Noonington knows: ’tis the candidates’ Hired Help — the “political advisers,” as America’s boorish Huns know them — that have poisonedeth the grog of political discourse in the Colonies. Letteth us chance into this seven-day’s issuance of “Declarations.”

…Exactly. Here’s some comical shit Peggy wrote about Obama and McCain’s political handlers:

“They send their candidates out to speak such thin gruel, such spat-out porridge, that we are struck dumb, and left daydreaming about the fact that Mr. Obama’s suits are always slate gray and never seem to wrinkle, and Mr. McCain tonight seems like a rabbity forest creature darting amid the hedgerows.” Damn those interminable rabbity forest creatures, always eating our shrubbery during furious dartings amid the hedgerows. Kill them all…
“I have grown impatient with the strategists from the campaigns, the little blond monsters who go on cable TV to give us their bouncy, aggressive, tendentious talking points. They are like the men on the plane, the gargoyles with BlackBerrys who think the race is about them and their personal win/loss ratio, who think history is their plaything, who stay up with the press in the bar sipping Perrier and calling it seltzer, and who advise their candidates, in essence, to talk down to the voters, to the American people.” Pulitzer much?

Declarations: Playing Frisbee on a Precipice [WSJ]

Baby Shark Jesus Forgives You, Harold Brazil

Juli Weiner — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:26:49 +0000

This little shark in Virginia was immaculately conceived! How long until Baby Shark Jesus replaces Sarah Palin on the GOP ticket, to Appeal To The Base? [WTOP]
Some geniuses are trying to encourage you to drink responsibly, by making you buy six beers when you only want one. [DCist]
Hillary Clinton’s new email pyramid scheme is called the “Hotliner.” It’s based out of the Watergate and sounds like it involves sexy eyeliner. [Fishbowl DC]
Local states Maryland and Virginia rank 10th and 11th, respectively, on Business Week’s list of most terribly mismanaged state budgets. [DC Examiner]
A certain formed DC Councilman/Pynchon character named “Harold Brazil” was arrested for assaulting someone who worked at a tattoo parlor. [Washington Post]