While we’re marking time until veep selections give us fresh targets to mock, we thought we’d take a moment to express our mad, passionate, wall-pounding, puppy-frightening, Brangelina-in-Africa love for Donna Brazile.

See, we watch CNN during election nights. We watch CNN because we can’t stand Chris Matthews live, and much prefer reading the Tweety recaps later. And when CNN rolls out the talking heads, Donna (oh, Donna, take us now!) is the head we listen to. She reminds us of our straight-talkin’ Fun Aunt, the one who doesn’t take shit at Thanksgiving and serves the most fantastic pineapple ham. (Incestuous allusions are solely the responsibility of the reader.)

Problem is, we know little about her. She’s a Superdelegate! who cannily kept her decision close to her vest throughout the primaries. (Compared to the other Supes! who were lamely waiting to jump on the train until it arrived. It’s our nuance, and we’re sticking with it.) She managed Al’s campaign in 2000. She runs a PR firm or something. And that’s about it.

We’ve been willing to preserve our fantasy and ignore brutal reality until this moment, but sooner or later you gotta send out the spies, if only to keep the prenup in order. So, as much as we don’t want to hear this, let’s see if we can find some dirt:

• Born December 1959, grew up in New Orleans. So both of us are younger than Madonna. Good.
• As a deputy field director for Dukakis, amid rumors of a Bush I concubine, she came out with a classic: “The American people have every right to know if Barbara Bush will share that bed with him in the White House.” Resignation immediately followed. Sassy!
• Donna to Colbert: “Look, I’m a woman, so I like Hillary. I’m black; I like Obama. But I’m also grumpy, so I like John McCain.” That’s the interview where he sets up a Kansas City rendezvous with her, which makes us extremely jealous.
• Got into a dustup with Teh Gheys over something or other in 2006, which may or may not be deeply ironic. We’ll sit that one out, although we may have to adjust our KC fantasies a tad.
• Owns Brazile & Associates, a DC consulting firm, which means there must be somebody nasty on the client list. Those oil spills don’t cover up themselves!

Well, we give up. There must be something to resent about her, but until somebody steps forward with photos of her drowning kitties in the Potomac, we’re sticking with our unrequited adoration.

We’ve lived our entire life within an hour of the Pacific Ocean, so generally we’re clueless about anything happening east of the Cascades Sierra Nevadas Washington Street. (We’ve moved a few times.) Which means when potential veepist Jim Webb shows up on the Daily Show, he’s new to our sheltered awareness. Dude seems to have the necessary qualifications — not black, not Hillary — and aside from the orange hair, we don’t see a problem. But just to make sure, we did some googling extensive research into The Man Who Would Be The Man Behind The Man:

• Vietnam vet: Fine, but we’re getting tired of making up for a criminal war by nominating its survivors to national office.
• Double agent: Not just a former Republican — a former Reagan Republican. Knows how to whistle the Blue Dogs.
• Honestly enjoys country music — no pandering required!
• Gun nut.
• An asshole you can love: when the new senator met President Bush, he reportedly refused to shake his hand. Bush asked Webb how his son was doing in Iraq, and Webb replied, “I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President.” “That’s not what I asked. How’s your boy?” Bush replied. The senator said, “That’s between me and my son, Mr. President.”
• Butch. Butch, butch, butch. No pansy big-city elitism in this Appalachian son.

Sure, there are few cranky things in his past that will displease the faithful (anti-Vietnam Memorial, pro-Tailhook), but if we’re looking for an LBJ to Unicorn’s JFK, this may be as good as it gets.

Jim Webb – a possible Obama veep? [Baltimore Sun]

Anyone but Webb [Slate]

The Jim Webb Story [NY Review]

Simple comment on Jim Webb as veep [The Atlantic]

Geez, there must be something out there… The new iPhone 3G? Nah, even if you can download porn three times faster. Ralph “Unsafe at Any Election” Nader polling 6 percent? One spoiler at a time, please. John “Keating Five” McCain throwing darts at Unicorn’s veep posse over some S&L loans? Wake us up for the next Fistacular. And we’ll take a pass on Bimbo Eruptions: The Criterion Edition.

So, what’s left?

South Korea’s cabinet offered to resign on Tuesday after an unpopular deal to widen the market to U.S. beef imports sparked massive street protests against the government which has been in office barely three months.

Something about Mad Cow disease being spread from the Democrats American cattle. But here’s the thing: the entire cabinet offered to resign. Over a beef deal. And not one of them is writing a book about it. And here we thought North Korea had the crazy leaders.

S.Korea cabinet offers to resign over U.S. beef row [Reuters]

If she manages to be really, really nice over the next six to eight weeks, we’ll think about it. But if she scratches up the couch again, we’re getting a retriever.

Jockeying begins in ‘veepstakes’ to become Obama’s running mate [Ottawa Citizen]

So, you spent some quality time trying to be the Demrats’ best demagogue since Huey Long, but it didn’t work out. Time to command the troops you’ve riled up to draw ranks and defeat the common enemy. How’d that go?

• “If Hillary is not on the ballot in November, we will vote McCain for sure.” -Alice4hillary
• “DNC does not deserve you!!!I will never vote for OBama….HILLARY 2012” -bb in nola
• “Help elect McCain in 2008….that’s a guaranteed win for her in 2012…GUARANTEED!!!!!” -Our Time 2008
• “the sooner we lose the election in November without Hillary, the sooner she will be the next Democratic President.” -cleffnote
• “HILLARY IS SENDING A SECRET CODE MESSAGE IN HER VOICE AND HER ACTIONS FOR US TO VOTE FOR MCCAIN IN 2008 AND NOT OBAMA. SHE SAID SHE WILL BE BACK IN 2012….” -Denny4Hillary

Welcome aboard!

Open Thread [blogHillary]

Programming apologizes for this week’s interruption of Bound for Glory by The Blair Witch Project. We’re taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Clinton to quit campaign Saturday at noon [MarketWatch]

Fucking mockingbirds. Well, now that we’re awake, let’s liveblog the mofo…

11:44 a.m.: Cut back to Donna Brazile, CNN. Make us happy.

11:46 a.m.: Candy Crowley: “She doesn’t want to be looked at as the skunk in the party.” Whoops!

11:47 a.m.: This is a major production for a concession speech. There must be a Firesign Theatre album that got there first.

11:48 a.m.: Candy: Swampsow relied on an apathy campaign, not expecting all those new voter registrations. It’s too early to start counting all the Republican strategies she deployed.

11:50 a.m: Candy: “Campaigns aren’t lost on one thing, they’re lost on everything.” This after bringing up the Iraq vote, which sent many folks looking elsewhere. I think the law of unintended consequences applies.

11:52 a.m.: Drug ads! Drink!

11:55 a.m.: Jesus fucking christ — they’ve got a cam on her Bronco Suburban, probably going to run a helicopter chase. Well, she is a murder suspect.

Noon: CNN labels it THE CLINTON EXIT. Pursued by a bear, we would hope.

12:02: Delay getting started; apparently the Surrender Monkeys want to be paid in advance.

12:03: Kool-aid now being distributed to the crowd for the exciting mass-suicide finale.

12:07: SongWatch: “We Are Family”.

12:09: Clintons still haven’t left home. Jaws of Life called in to pry Swampsow from the banister.

12:12: Carl Bernstein basks in his last moment of relevance before Woodward throws him back under the rock.

12:18: Candy: Peeks at script, says Swampsow “will give her ‘unequivocal’ support to Barack Obama.” We can only hope CNN sets up the Audience Crush-o-Meter for that one.

12:22: Speech is being given, sooner or later, at the National [Building] Museum. Is that the joint where Colbert’s portrait hangs by the toilet? Alas, no — that’s the National Portrait Gallery.

12:23: More drug ads! Drink! Oh, it’s a Cialis ad — stroke!

12:26: Tires found in garage, Swampsow‘s Suburban taken off the blocks, and the Political Career Cortege begins its slow procession towards the funeral.

12:35: Chicago Bureau notes a truly sad passing: Jim McKay, 1921-2008. We were watching the Munich Olympics when he delivered the news. Moments like that stick.

12:38: SWAMPSOW IS IN THE BUILDING. SCARVES ARE BEING PREPARED TO TOSS TO THE AUDIENCE.

12:40: Did we say Firesign Theatre? We meant Rocky Horror. We want to see running mascara, and we want to throw things at the screen.

12:44: We haven’t yet been informed whether this is a Cher farewell, to be followed by months of concession speeches across the country.

12:46: The End Begins…

12:48: So, is she gonna buy the kid a new Xbox, or isn’t she?

12:49: For members participating in the Website Plug Pool, the three-minute slot has lost.

12:51: “Eighteen million of you…” Game over. She can’t help poking a stick in the wound.

12:52: Bill to Hillary, 9 a.m.: “Why not just use the stump speech, Hon? Nobody gives a shit.”

12:55: Wait.. Wait… SHE DOES IT! BOOOOOOOOO!!!!

12:56: BOOOOOOOOO!!! REAP THE WHIRLWIND!!!

12:57: “The Democratic Party is a family.” So is the Sopranos.

1:00: Bill to Hillary: “No, really, Hon. Just stick the concession here. The rest you can do in your sleep.”

1:01: “Yes. We. Can.” Why does hearing that from her make my stomach turn?

1:03: Okay, now we’re into fresh material. And it’s getting harder to hear the booing.

1:04: “Could a woman really serve as commander-in-chief?” Yes. Margaret Thatcher.

1:07: It really is last summer’s speech — she thought she’d be running against a white male.

1:09: “If we can blast fifty women into space…” I am not going there. Mommy would kill me.

1:11: After laying into the Glass Ceiling for seven minutes, she says Never Mind. Right.

1:15: “I’m going to keep doing what I was doing long before the cameras showed up.” The Rose Law Firm is hiring?

1:16: It’s over. All that remains is for Lanny Davis to deny everything.

It’s been a rough week for geeks, and while trolling the intertubes for some whacking material light entertainment, we stumbled across this heartwarming story about a man, a vision, a few billion dollars, and an underground sex cave:

What is a man to do with $2.3 billion?

If you are Henry T. Nicholas III, one of the original dot-com billionaires – whose fortune survived the crash of 2000 – the answer is simple: build a “sex cave” under your house, maintain a fully stocked warehouse of drugs, get high on your two private jets, keep a brothel’s worth of prostitutes on the payroll and, during the boring moments, spike your colleagues’ drinks with Ecstasy.

Or you could wear a sissy outfit and fight crime. But somehow that doesn’t seem as appealing as it used to be.

Billionaire Henry T. Nicholas III built ‘sex cave under mansion’ [Times UK]