“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 **** ’s getting deleted), after the jump.

White House Party [Webshots]

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).

On the Democratic side, we hear that Bill Richardson (D-NM) is hosting several top political consultants at the Governor’s mansion this week, as part of a two-day retreat to “refine his national message” leading up to his 2008 presidential bid. Thoughts on how to deal with the mini-scandal over his exaggeration of his baseball prowess, plus that whole “inappropriate touching” thing, are most welcome.

And on the Republican side, we hear that Tom Ridge — former DHS Secretary and Pennsylvania Governor — is thinking about a possible White House run. If the rumors about him are true (and not satirical), the rigors of the campaign trail may not gel well with his obsessive-compulsive tendencies. A presidental run can involve lots of furry animal petting.

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.

Okay, we offer you this gossip with all the usual caveats. As noted over at Daily Kos, “one should always take almost unverifiable content from the internet with a grain of salt — especially from this comedy website.” We also forwarded the thread to a source who used to work in the White House, who declared it to be “lunacy” (except for the stuff about Condoleezza Rice).

Enough with the disclaimers and caveats. Let’s get started, shall we? Here’s what “Martin Random” has to say:

I was going to post this in the “Expose the big lie” thread but after I wrote it I thought it was interesting enough to merit a thread of its own. This is all good information, personally verified or witnessed by none other than me, but I will not answer any questions about it or go into any detail other than what I’ve already typed out. I may reply with more information or anecdotes if I see fit, but I’ve pretty much already scraped the barrel of my experiences.

These are some facts I have witnessed and learned through my employment. Take it at face value, believe it or don’t believe it, because I’m not providing corroborating pictures, details, or evidence beyond my own testimony.

Homeland security buys in bulk and at great premium millions of dollars of useless personal appliances from China, such as rice cookers, nose hair trimmers, massage wands, and heating pads, boxes them up, and buries them in railroad shipping containers in the Arizona desert for no reason whatsoever other than to spend its budget and prevent sub-agencies from getting the funds. I suspect that the money goes to a middleman in order to secretly siphon funds into foreign organizations which we can’t support over the table, but this is just me trying to find a justification for this massive and intentional government waste.

So DHS wastes lots and lots of money — tell us something we don’t already know!

Donald Rumsfeld needs to wear iced underwear because of some medical condition, and he has his secret service detail hold his spares. He was recently getting uncontrollable long-term erections and had to change up his medical treatments. The underwear and the erections is why he uses a standing desk, not because he is some super-man. He also wears nylon stockings, not because he’s gay, but to control some vascular problem with his legs which causes him intense pain.

This seems pretty dubious to us. But hey, ice in his underpants might explain why he gets so testy at those Pentagon briefings.

President Bush uses anti-depressant medication, a lot of it, at a stupendous dosage, and he is hiding it from the American public. This is the real reason he stopped drinking. Because of the dosage, he is also impotent.

Hmm, interesting. We enjoy speculating about presidential substance abuse too. Don’t know about the impotence, though; Laura Bush has a real glow about here these days. (Maybe it’s just that new personal trainer of hers.)

Tom Ridge carries 20 credit cards with him at all times, each one with a very low limit. I have never heard of him using one, ever, but he has them. He also wears his socks inside-out, and will flip the **** out and walk strangely if he is forced to wear them properly, because it drives him crazy. All of his socks must be laundered right side in and then turned inside out before they are returned to him.

He gave specific instructions about handling his food, and not allowing his vegetables to touch any other food item on the plate. His utensils must be steamed over boiling water. He will not eat soup which hasn’t been boiled within the past 20 minutes or which he has not prepared himself. If any of these rules are violated, he flies into a rage, turns beet red, and will not eat a single thing. He has his personal attendants confirm over and over that the food is as he likes it.

He also shaves his forearms and hands because he can’t stand the idea of body hair on his arms. He demands that his bedsheets are bleach white and changed fresh every night and he sleeps in a separate bed in a big, tight, body-length nylon sleeve, with a fan blowing over him at full power. He is terrified of animals which have fur or hair longer than one inch, and will not go near curly hair of any kind, even on people. At one time he ran from his office and demanded that someone look under everything for a rodent which did not and could not exist, then he had the entire place wiped down with disinfectant and vacuumed twice. While this was done he couldn’t even bear to look at the door, or come within 20 feet of his office. He was in hysterics.

It’s never good to hear that the former Homeland Security chief is a paranoid nut job. What does he know that we don’t?

President Bush, when dining at the white-house, does not eat any item of food which has not been first sniffed by a trained dog before being prepared. Think about that.

Word among the staff is that Cheney was drunk when he shot that lawyer, and secluded himself for a day to sober up and avoid felony firearms charges. I don’t have any direct information on this because the guys with him at the time are not talking. This is totally unconfirmed, but I think it is plausible.

This is all pretty familiar territory — nothing that we haven’t heard before. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not, who knows…

Dick Cheney has chronic gum problems and his breath smells like **** as a result. He is also a CLOSE TALKER. He keeps a small bottle of diluted hydrogen peroxide which he rinses with every hour on the hour, and he swallows it instead of spitting. He also picks his nose vigorously (violently) and hums loudly and tunelessly to himself while taking **** s.

Now this is something that we can believe. Remember the interview he gave to Brit Hume after accidentally shooting Harry Whittington? Very close-talker-ish.

There is a sealed room in the whitehouse which once held a half-ton block of cheese for about 30 years.

The White house is planting its own men among the press agents at press conferences.

Like Jeff Gannon? Or that supposedly “Indian” journalist, the one who always jumps in with some softball about India-U.S. relations, just as Scotty is getting ripped a new one over Plamegate?

The white house lawn is mowed every other day by the same man humming the same tune.

Yeah, and he’s an illegal immigrant. That’s why the White House is pushing so hard for this “guest worker” program.

Despite all of this craziness, there is nothing strange whatsoever about Condoleeza Rice. She is completely balanced and normal, if slightly robotic in her personal demeanor. She smells very nice at all times. She does, however, constantly check her investments online from her office when she thinks that nobody is looking, and she has slept at her desk on multiple occasions.

Finally, something we can believe in without reservation. We have heard, from people who have worked with her, that Condi is actually pretty normal. Hearing that she sometimes naps at her desk is reassuring to us. It shows that, despite being Secretary of State, a fitness fanatic, and an accomplished classical musician, she is actually human.

There is an administrative law judge who sits in an office in a building near the white-house, earns around 200k per year and has a secretary, and he does nothing except sit, read, and listen to classical music all day. His secretary likewise does nothing. He gets meals taken to him from the White-house kitchen, and is so lonely that he latches on to whoever gets sent and talks to them for hours about the korean war. His family is all dead and his secretary hates him. In a drawer in his desk he has an old revolver, which he got in there somehow despite that he shouldn’t have been able to bring it in. I think he will shoot himself one day.

The “undisclosed location” is usually a local police officer training ground or state trooper college. Shh.

An ALJ who earns a six-figure salary and does absolutely nothing? Make that two things we can believe in wholeheartedly from this thread.

And that, boys and girls, is Wonkette’s take on the White House gossip from Something Awful. Y’all can stop emailing it to us now. Thanks!

Secrets from Inside the White House [Something Awful]
Someone May Be Spilling the Beans at the White House [Daily Kos]

• 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]

• Supreme Court has shied away from defining the precedent of the eavesdropping program. [NYT]
• Administration cites '78 law to defend eavesdropping program. [NYT]
• Most Congressional leaders initially supported the eavesdropping program. [NYT]
• Republicans "hold" the Senate Intelligence Authorization Bill for the first time in 27 years. [WP]
• Congress approves $29b for the Gulf Coast. [WP]
• Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) distances himself from Christian group that advocated intelligent design. [WP]
• 72% of Americans disagree with Pentagon's propaganda campaign in Iraq. [USAT]
• Independent writers and researchers are often quietly backed by lobbyists without disclosure. [NYT]