"This is my first ever blog, so I forgive me if I make any 'blogosphere faux pas.'"

No no no, Donatella Versace. We will not forgive you. But we appreciate your humility as you enter our domain. So go ahead, tell us all about the White House Correspondents' Association dinner:

The evening started with drinks at Christopher Hitchens' house.

Just getting started!

Then onto the Newsweek pre-dinner cocktail...

How does one get onto a cocktail? I'm picturing that cartoon character from the Playboy Magazine jokes page...

... and then the actual dinner....

The dinner was a glamorous affair, as it was last year, but this time round there was a very different atmosphere, in ways that seemed to me to symbolize the huge changes that are taking place in this country as a result of the new administration.

The first thing that hit me was that nobody was using their BlackBerrys. This is a pet hate of mine, and last year lots of the guests were glued to their devices. While George Bush did a little comedy — conducting the orchestra and entertaining people with a speech — the audience was just not that attentive. Many people were talking away and those dreaded BlackBerrys were out in full force.

This year, the minute Barack Obama stood up to speak, there was silence....

There was a friendly atmosphere, it was cool, younger, relaxed and glamorous. Glamour was something that seemed to be completely lost before....

The key to this administration's appeal is, I think, that it's so energetic and positive, and (yes, one of my favourite words) glamorous!...

Glamour. Is it wrong to have glamorous leaders that glamorous people find glamorous?

It was a long night but the time flew — it went so go quickly. People genuinely had fun. I've been to so many of this kinds of events where you have people looking at their assistants as if to say, "Can I leave now?" There was none of that.

Hey, I want an assistant, an assistant that can read my eyes when they say "Can I leave now?"!

Everyone was having a good time, and I was amazed by how members of the Obama administration, high-powered people like the Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, and the Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, were just walking round the room in a really cool and relaxed way. Rahm was carrying his jacket slung over his shoulder. These people look like they know what they are doing.

And, yeah, what are they doing? But they look like they know what they are doing. Per Donatella. With their cool, relaxed walk around the room and their jacket slung over their shoulder. What a relief from Bush!

"While this crisis was caused by banks taking too much risk, the danger now is that they will take too little."

Geithner's plan.

ADDED at 8:52 a.m. Central Time: Politico:

Overheard: A conversation between two reporters at the White House after Tim Geithner's morning pen and pad briefing.

"I survived Geithner. I can survive anything," one reporter said.

"He didn't exactly instill confidence, did he?" the other responded

But the stock market is up. Right now at least.

"Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is trying to stabilize the nation’s banking industry..."

"... implement a housing rescue plan and prop up a plunging stock market – all with about 18 vacant senior positions, virtually the entire upper echelon of his department. The staff is so faceless that lobbyists have begun trading jokes about a 'ghost' bureaucracy, given the many empty picture frames hanging on the department’s walls."

Just give him a big plastic button labeled "fix everything."

Why Geithner's bailout rollout sucked so bad.

He realized that the plan he had worked on for weeks was a disaster, so an alternative plan had to be slapped together at the last minute.

"Administration officials were greeted with sarcasm and laughter Monday night when they briefed lawmakers and congressional staff..."

"... on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's new financial-sector bailout project... The laughter was at its height when Obama officials explained that the White House planned to guarantee a wide swath of toxic assets — which they referred to as "legacy assets" — but wouldn't be asking Congress for money."

"Stocks Tumble as Bailout Plan Is Unveiled."

...

Daschle withdraws.

Obama accepts it "with sadness and regret."

Obama can move on, and Daschle can slink away and, sidelined, rake in millions.

ADDED: Jame Taranto says:

Daschle had become such an embarrassment for the administration that even the New York Times called in an editorial for him to skedaddle. Noting that Daschle, like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, attributed his tax shortfall to "unintentional oversights," the paper opines: "Mr. Daschle is one oversight case too many." The newspaper that gave us the "one-grope rule" for Democratic sexual harassment now has promulgated a similar one for nonpayment of taxes.