• And to make it even better, his tagline is "What? I like variety," which is an odd choice for the man notorious for sticking to his "type." Related: Hugh is finally getting a divorce. • The Australian government has announced plans to widen protection for women fleeing their home countries out of fear for possible genital mutilation and honor killings. Women at risk will now be covered by the "Refugees Convention." • Four women from Wisconsin have been charged with being party to felony false imprisonment after they held a 37-year-old man captive and super-glued his penis to his stomach as a twisted punishment for his philandering ways. The woman who did the gluing, Therese Ziemann, is also charged with misdemeanor fourth-degree sexual assault. • An increase in availability of sex-determination and sex-selection technology has lead to a huge disparity between the number of male and female babies born in Vietnam (112.1 male babies per 100 female babies). The U.N. says they fear the widening gap may lead to a greater demand for sex work, and increased gender-based violence. • Iranian video artist Shirin Neshat has premiered her first feature film about women's rights in 1953 Iran, titled "Women Without Men" at the Venice film festival. Neshat says that much of the material she explores in the film can be applied to the situation today in Iran. • Michelle Obama has given her support to a request from the Freshfarm Markets to close a section of Vermont Avenue for a weekly farmers' market. If the request goes through, the busy street would be blocked off every Thursday between 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. • 16-year-old Jessica Watson had hoped to become the youngest person to sail around the world, but just days before she was about to sail, she crashed her boat, the Pink Lady, into a 63,000-ton cargo carrier of the coast of Australia. • Lynndie England is suing writer Gary S. Winkler for seizing control of her biography, which she had hoped would help salvage her image. The book, Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked the World, is apparently not selling very well. "Nobody's getting rich here. I'm in the hole," said Winkler. • A Portuguese judge has banned further sales of a book written by a former policeman on the grounds that it hampers the search for Madeleine McCann. The book in question claims that McCann, who has been missing since May 2007, is dead. • In attempts to change his reputation as a "closed, brutal dictator," Iranian President Mahoud Ahmadinejad has already appointed one woman to his cabinet and is pushing for a second. However, women's rights activists recognize that the women appointed will probably not further their cause. "These women that Mr. Ahmadinejad selected are anti-woman," said Aida Qajar. • Attorneys for NFL player Ben Roethlisberger have rejected a "bizarre" offer to settle a lawsuit accusing Roethlisberger of rape. The so-called "bizarre" deal asks that the quarterback admit he raped Andrea McNulty and donate $100,000 to a women's advocacy group. Roethlisberger's lawyers claim her proposal "insults women who have legitimately suffered from sexual misconduct." Say what? • A panel of medical experts have voted to approve HPV vaccine Cervarix. The FDA will review the application and make a decision by September 29th. • According to a recent survey, one in every 33 women who regularly attend religious services has been the target of sexual advances by religious leader. • The Australian government said Wednesday that they are willing to allow women to serve in frontline combat units. American women are currently barred from combat roles. However, according to this article (and photograph) Australian women already serve on the frontline. • A British coroner failed to determine whether the LighterLife diet contributed to the death of 34-year-old bride-to-be Samantha Clowe. • IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said on Tuesday that even if Caster Semenya's gender tests show that she has had an "unfair advantage" due to a medical condition, she will most likely get to keep her gold medal. "This is not a doping case at present so it shouldn't be considered as one where you have a retroactive stripping of results," he explained. •

"Some people are sentimental and become excited. As I said, I compared it to a soccer match. Their team has not won in the match," he says, referring to supporters of his opponent, Mir Hossein Moussavi, who feel that their votes were not counted, and that the results were fixed by the Iranian government. "In the end, I don't think we'll have any serious challenges," Ahmadinejad says, "Sentiments are high and sometimes they do some stuff on the streets, but in the end we had 40 million people participating and what is happening on the streets is like a football match." [CNN]

A government worker, understandably speaking under condition of anonymity, tells the New York Times that the government "didn't rig the vote. They didn't even look at the vote. They just wrote the name and put the number in front of it." According to NBC News, there have also been technological glitches over the past few days that have prevented Iranians from accessing their text messages or websites devoted to Moussavi. "Text messaging," NBC notes, "is frequently used by many Iranians - especially young Mousavi supporters - to spread election news." Video is now coming in, showing the increasingly violent riots in progress, though MSNBC claims that riot police seem to be gaining control of the situation:

The riots are a clear sign that the people of Iran are disillusioned with their leader and the government that stands behind him: it is heartbreaking not only because their candidate lost, but because they've lost faith in the system itself. As 26-year-old Mitra Khorshidi tells the Telegraph, "I cannot see anybody wanting to participate in any kind of politics after this. But it has also been a defeat for the mullahs. They had a chance to regain the trust of the people and they lost it."

Iran Elections: Anger On The Streets Of Tehran [Telegraph]
Violence Flares As Ahmadinejad Wins Vote [MSNBC]
Wide Reverberations As Door Is Slammed On Hopes Of Change [NYTimes]

"I am the absolute winner of the election by a very large margin," Moussavi says, "It is our duty to defend people's votes. There is no turning back." 46 million people turned out to vote, with 62.6% of those votes going to Ahmadinejad and 33.7 going to Moussavi, who believes the results are a fraud and says that he "won't surrender to this manipulation." [NYTimes]

MOE: I gotta get coffee but apparently David Brooks does a 180 on Obama re the farm bill today
MEGAN: cool. i hate the farm bill
MOE: Well speak of the devil! Does David dig the 22-year-olds? Or do you think this young lady was applying for a job?
MEGAN: Do you, can you, apply for a job in white knee high boots? I mean, other than as an actual go-go dancer?
MOE: Kids today totes! She probably wanted to be his research assistant. Or maybe he was just encouraging her not to pursue the wrong way. So should we talk about Iran and Syria and North Korea…just how "serious" are these places anyway?
MOE: We should also maybe talk about oil.
MOE: I'm going to get coffee though I'm off my meds today.
MEGAN: The oil on my face from all the greasy fucking food I ate last night to make up for not eating all day (hello NY Jezzies!) or the black shit in the ground?
MOE: Vito Fossella abandoned his bid for re-election "in a bombshell announcement that brings the curtain down on one of the most storied careers in Staten Island political history," says the Staten Island Advance. They should enlist Method Man to run. I don't even think he has any secret love children.
MEGAN: "Storied career?" Dude, can we talk hyperbole? He wasn't even a Committee chairman. The only thing that's gonna be legendary about his career is how it ended, which is balls deep in his mistress with his illegitimate child in the other room and his wife and other kids sound asleep in New York.
8:35 AM
MOE: Yeah so I have coffee and my Acela ticket now and David Brooks is totally right, the Farm Bill is horseshit, and the only thing I would add to the statement "as the number of small, organized factions in a society grows, the political culture becomes more divisive, the economy becomes more rigid and the nation loses vitality" is that the organized factions don't have to be as small as agriculture. And speaking of which, $307 billion is an astonishing number.
MOE: The question is, I guess, whether McCain get Americans to see in agribusiness the same fatcatism they see in Countrywide Financial and Exxon and Jimmy Cayne.
8:45 AM
MEGAN: Well, I don't have coffee yet but if my nose does not deceive me, my friend whose house I'm at in NY has made me some for when I get done here and that's one of 100 reasons why he's awesome. Also, this farm bill is additionally a huge fuck you to the WTO and the developing countries that stymied progress in the Doha Round in order to achieve progress in terms of reduced subsidies. Fuck you, African nations. Fuck you Bangladesh. Kiss our collective asses, Brazil and Argentina. Enjoy that global food shortage thingie and that poverty thingie because we wanted more market access for our artificially cheap foodstuffs.
MOE: Hey, look, the EU is rethinking its own farm subsidies!Theirs are only $75 billion annually though. What if we proposed to just cut our bill down to Europe's level?
MEGAN: Actually, at the WTO, we wanted them to cut theirs more than we cut ours and vice versa. No, seriously.
MOE: That sounds like something we would do! And here's an unfortunate news analysis to which Drudge is linking that credits the increased use of ethanol to the breaking of our foreign oil addiction.
MEGAN: As though ethanol has to come from corn.
MOE: Total digression but GOP Senator Bob Corker rejected/denounced the Michelle Obama ads.
MEGAN: Same way he did the Harold Ford/white girl ads no doubt.
8:55 AM
MOE: Apparently ethanol consumes a third of the US corn output. Just one reason USDA economists are expecting a 5% increase in food prices this year…ugh, this topic is so obvious and boring though. Ethanol subsidies = BAD IDEA. There is just no good alternative case to be made there! While he tries to figure out how to articulate a plan for The Rest Of The World That Resents Us, just where is the harm in adopting the one position that happens to both be held by the Republican front runner and the world's poor??? I guess it's in alienating his Iowans. I wonder, though, how often something like "unwavering support for agribusiness welfare" came up during those caucuses.
9:05 AM
MOE: Especially when four out of every five Americans want the country to move in a different direction!
MEGAN: Also, like, we could eliminate the ethanol tariff, which is really high and effectively keeps out ethanol imports from places like Brazil, where it is not made from corn.
MEGAN: We could also rejigger the current subsidies to reflect the chemical reality that one can make ethanol from things other than corn, and push investment in that direction rather than encouraging the construction of more corn-based ethanol facilities but, yeah, Obama's got to win Iowa, so...
MOE: Annoyingly, ethanol is nowhere to be mentioned in today's Bob Herbert "Let's Be Serious" column. But thanks for alerting us to this:

The Houston Chronicle did a long takeout on Sunday on the suicide in March 2007 of an Army recruiting sergeant, Nils Aron Andersson — just one day after his marriage to Carry Walton. Sgt. Andersson, 25, had spoken of the many horrors that he had encountered in Iraq and was deeply depressed. He shot himself while sitting in his pickup in a parking garage. Distraught, Ms. Walton bought a 9-millimeter handgun at a sporting goods store the next day and killed herself.

MEGAN: Hooray for a lack of a waiting period in Texas.
MOE: Before I try to summon the will to check out that uplifting story I'd like to draw attention to an obvious but important Page 1 story in the Journal about how the American auto industry's manipulation and systemic inflation of demand via aggressive rebating, employee discounts, predatory lending, large-scale offloading to employee fleets, over the past ten years has finally been deemed unsustainable! The American automakers who embraced waste as a business model for so long are now finally accepting that auto demand might never fall back to where it was…maybe because it was never really "demand" in the first place!
9:20 AM
MEGAN: Wait, but I liked 0% financing. Goddammit. Does it mention that what is also sustainable is negotiating with the UAW to determine production levels years in advance is also probably a bad idea? Because that's not exactly market forces, people.
MOE: Well right but market forces, at least the way we think of them, absolutely DO NOT GOVERN DEMAND in this country. It's one of my pet peeves. There's a very good Harper's reading this month further probing this.
9:25 AM
MEGAN: Well, but what are market forces and what is demand? I mean, they do to a degree, it's just not the absolute that our college professors and some on the ideological right think it is (or know it's not but try to tell us it is).
MOE: Right and the problem with the ideological left is that they just don't engage with the issue enough.
MEGAN: I think because it's too complex to really explain to people. I mean, hell, I TA'd economics in grad school for other grad students and getting them to understand microeconomics was like pulling teeth sometimes and they were all smart people. It was like this insane mental block for some of them to the point I truly wondered if I was, like, speaking German and not noticing or something.
9:30 AM
MOE: Well I don't even understand microeconomics. I think it's fucking stupid. Macro is where it's at.
MOE: hahah I being, of course, an authority on such matters.
MOE: I got a C
MEGAN: Micro is like a really simple way to start understanding how the stock market works at a very basic level. I assume you work up from there but I didn't because I wanted to get a real job. HAHAHAHA.
MOE: Hey here's Jonathan Chait saying we should ignore everything John McCain and Barack Obama say about foreign policy, which I'm sort of down for.
MOE: Did you happen to catch George Will on Sunday btw?
9:35 AM
MEGAN: I mean, why don't we just all accept that every policy proposal ever made by a candidate is prefaced by "In a perfect world, where I and I alone got to decide, we would do this...." and ends with "But it's not a perfect world, so what eventually happens will look nothing at all like this but it won't be my fault but vote for me because I had a good idea."
MOE: (Oh and speaking of economics not being a real job Floyd Norris slyly agrees with you:

According to the C.P.I. numbers, gasoline prices in April were 13.7 percent higher than the were in December. Or at least they were before the seasonal adjustments were factored in. With seasonal adjustments — the numbers that are prominently reported — gasoline prices were down 1.6 percent.
I have not troubled to try to figure out how this could be, but Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG, gathered data and constructed spreadsheets. He figures that the May number, seasonally adjusted, will be up 5 percent for the month. Presumably, those sounding comforting words about inflation now will have less to say then.
Only a Ph.D. in economics would think he needed to spend a couple of hours to prove that gasoline prices are not declining these days.

MEGAN: Dude, we get to "seasonally adjust" what things cost?
MOE: Well certain things always cost more in certain seasons and certain months are more consumptive than others so…I can hazard a guess as to why this was but the point was just that data ≠ reality in a lot of areas in economics, which is scary
MEGAN: Yeah, like everything other kind of reality, economics is just a subjective reality. Shadows on the wall, etc.
MOE: lol you ALWAYS FALL BACK ON THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHY
MOE: I'm on to you lady
MOE: You probably have a secret Nietzsche sig file of your own
MEGAN: Yes, but it's in the original m'fucking German.
9:45 AM
MEGAN: Because that's how I roll. Quoting dead white German guys. I'm sofa king cool.
MOE: I am bringing this back to George Will and baseball btw.

In America, however, nothing ages as fast as novelty, and efforts to encourage Clinton to pack it in are heartening evidence that the novelty has worn off: The female candidate is like all other candidates. This is what equality looks like — life as an equal-opportunity dispenser of disappointments.

MEGAN: I love how George Will's theories on life are so similar to my own. He just forgot to add "never-ending" there at the end.
MOE:

When, in 1975, Frank Robinson became major league baseball's first African American manager, with the Cleveland Indians, that was an important milestone. But an even more important one came two years later, when the Indians fired him. That was real equality: Losing one's job is part of the job description of major league managers, because sacking the manager is one of the few changes a floundering team can make immediately. So, in a sense, Robinson had not really arrived until he was told to leave. Then he was just like hundreds of managers before him.

MEGAN: Well, unless you get fired for Working While Black. Then it is actually not equality.
MOE: What I love is that it seems that Hillary's own staff would agree. Sexism: why, they don't blame it for sinking her campaign either! Indeed, because they are too busy blaming one another. But Geraldine Ferrarro's reality is different..
MEGAN: Geraldine Ferraro should be president of the society of women who are so damn angry that their candidate didn't win that they'll fuck over the rest of us out of spite.
MEGAN: Also, ahem, it seems like they're trying to blackmail the superdelegates and the remaining states and shit, which is not a good tactic.
MOE: Well that society shares a reality of its own. It's just not mine. Or George Will's. And any society that claims us and George Will as a member is not a particularly exclusive one
MEGAN: I mean, I'm happy to create my own reality, I just realize that I have to function in the collectively shared reality.
10:05 AM
MOE: And I'm out with this, because I didn't want it to go unnoticed:

Is Lebanon viable anymore?" he asked. "Is Lebanon really viable?"
"Frankly, 40 years of my life have been wasted. Fifteen years of civil war, 15 years of Syrian domination and now we've come to something worse," he said, growing angry. "I've lost 40 years of my life in this stupid country. It really is a stupid country. I have nothing good to say about it anymore. I'm disgusted by what's taken place."
He dragged on his cigar, as he sat in his stately villa in Zqaq al-Blatt, enveloped by a scourge of concrete cluttering the neighborhood. Light reflected faintly from stained-glass windows of red and blue, resting under graceful Levantine arches.
"I wish I was born in Syria. Or that I was born in Egypt. Can you imagine living in a country that has gone through 30 years of this? What kind of country is this?"
He shook his head, his anger giving way to dejection.
"There's something wrong here," he said, "something wrong."

Basically, pantyhose must be worn every day, she was told. Even in the summertime? Oh yes, and "no exceptions." Well, what about pantsuits? "Well, I suppose you can wear them," the supervisor sighed, "But you are going to need to check with the Senator herself whether or not you will need to wear hose under pants, as well. I'm not entirely sure of the Senator's stance on pantsuits at this time." And before you ask, "how the fuck would anyone even know if you were wearing pantyhose underneath a pantsuit" — we're going to wager something along the lines of "wide stance."

Q: So, first things first: Is there drinking in Iran? Or do they just skip right over that part of the Winehouse catalog and go straight for the H? A: Oh, they totally drink in Iran. Christopher Hitchens was there a few years ago and he wrote about in it Vanity Fair. He was like, everyone except some dorky mullah gave me a glass or a shot when I went to their house. Porn and heroin are the big new things, though, you're right. It's better than Seattle.
Q: Since lots of people in the Western world are calling abstinence the new promiscuity, does that make the hijab the new miniskirt? In all the pictures we see on the TV of Iran, it seems to be pretty popular with the women there. A: The hijab is the new bikini, actually. Burkhas are the new miniskirts. But women who show too much ankle in Iran get arrested and have their feet plunged into buckets of cockroaches, like on Fear Factor or something. It's totally gross over there.
Q: Okay, so let's cut to the chase: Ahmadinejad: hot dictator? Or hottest dictator? A: Dude needs a shave and a haircut. And a few more inches, if you know what I mean. (He's short.) And he's not really a dictator. Ayatollah Khamenei is the real dictator and he's, like, old. He's even older than Bob Dole. None of those guys are hot. All the hot ones get strung up and tortured, especially the women who don't like the new miniskirts. Actually, Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards don't have as much power and influence as they used to. There's this unspoken agreement between the people and the government: you pretend to arrest us, as we'll pretend to behave. Again, it's like Seattle, only with occasional public hangings.
Q: Hey, speaking of hotness: you've been to Iraq. Are the Blackwater mercenaries all they're cracked up to be? Like, we know they're more indifferent to the sanctity of Iraqi civilian life than other mercenaries, but does that make them more cool and aloof and likely to carpet bomb your heart? I mean, is there any correlation between hotness and evil? A: Depends on what you're into. If you're into bad boys, yeah. They're kinda like Jack Bauer that way, only they're younger, better-paid, and don't have that annoying daughter bugging them at work all the time. I don't know about the correlation between hotness and evil. I mean, do you think Saddam Hussein is hot? I think he'd be gross even with a gay makeover. Better question: do you think Spencer Pratt is hot? No, right? Because he's EVIL.
Q: Ok but on a side note, can we compare our Persian kitty with Afghan President Hamid Karzai? Both rock the retro look, both have easy access to drugs and plenty of power, but why do you think the ladies are all over Ahmadinejad these days? A: The ladies just pretend to be hot for the A'jad. It's that or be flogged. They really do dig the Mayor of Kabul, though. He's kinda got that Sean Connery look going, only with a Muslim twist. And Afghanistan has more drugs than Iran, even more than Colombia. Even more than Miami, if you can believe that.
Q: Well, they're just hoarding them for the occasion Perez Hilton finally manages to kill off Castro. Anyway, new subject: last week, someone told me that the Iranians have oil but are going to have to start importing it soon, just like the U.S.. Is that true? Are we all going to have to get our oil from like, Iraq or something soon? A: They have that whole 1970s gas lines thing happening in Iran. A'jad is the new Jimmy Carter, only he takes hostages. They need oil from Iraq more than we do. What I want to know is, why aren't we getting oil from Iraq already? Didn't we, like, invade Iraq? When is that benefit supposed to kick in, anyway?
Q: Now, everyone's favorite presidential cat is also way into the nuclear scene (although he can likely pronounce it better than our president), but he keeps saying it's for cheap energy and we keep saying it's for bombs. Which is it? I mean, it seems like it be really hard to blow anything but their own country up with one of those big reactor thingies. A: The problem isn't that Iran will blow itself up, but that a bunch of Arab countries will want nuclear reactors for peaceful purposes, too, and everyone in the region will blow themselves up. That would suck. I don't own an SUV, but I might want one someday. How could I drive it if the Middle East is all blown up? Anyway, of course Iran wants the bomb. I know, I know, Bush lied, people died. And? A'jad saysIran has no gay people and that he has a green aura or some shit like that. Dude's cracked. And, besides, how is he supposed to push all the Jews into the sea? With cattle prods?
Q: Ha ha! All the gossip columns seem to be filled with blind items hinting that we'll be bombing Iran soon. Can you handicap that for me? This year, next year? Because I prefer not to travel when we're bombing places with terrorist ties, and I so need a vacation soon. A: What, you think I have Dick Cheney on speed dial or something? I work in places like Lebanon and Iraq, so I don't know what the hell is going on in Washington. You're totally asking the wrong guy. If you need a vacation during a war, just go to Israel. I did. They have booze, drugs, hot chicks, and a beach. What more do you want? That place is always getting bombed anyway, so what's the difference? But it's totally full of terrorists, I mean, tourists. It's full of both, actually, so it's pretty much just like Europe. But they like Americans there, and they totally don't like Iran, so it's cool. They're not really into the jihad craze yet (except the terrorists). It's like the 1950s or something. They're kinda square, you know, but the taxi drivers won't yell at you for being a Capitalist Imperialist Oppressor when they pick you up from the airport so it's nicer than France. Actually, France just elected a Capitalist Imperialist Oppressor government, so I guess you can go there again even if Cheney starts going crazy.
Q: Ah, Sarkozy is definitely my favorite Capitalist Imperialist Oppressor crush, at least until January 2009. A: Yeah, but he's totally gay. And French. Dude doesn't even wear a shirt half the time, so you can just imagine what he thinks about the new miniskirts.

Which is why I found Lee Bollinger's heartfelt, powerful and 100% accurate introduction to be gratuitous. Hate feeds hate; always has. But at the end of the day, it's a small and stupid emotion borne of ignorance and insecurity and oh yeah being really poor. Taken on its own, Ahmadinejad's speech was just so fucking stupid and crazy and small and sad that its power was actually diminished by Bollinger's fiery intro.

• Senator Craigslist says that not only is he not gay, he has never been gay, including when he was arrested three months ago and also back in 1982 when he had to deny he was gay on account of all the young boy Congressional pages he'd plied with drugs and alcohol and fucked, which very neatly explains, you see, why he plead guilty.
  
• Fidel Castro, back writing editorials for his mouthpiece newspaper after being crucified last Friday by Pontius Perez Hilton, writes that a Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama ticket would be almost as "invincible" as him — and he's not exactly stoked.
  
• Illiterate L.C. ex Jason Wahler afforded a 4-karat diamond rock for his barely-leagal honey. [TMZ]

• The United States has a gun for every person and that's how come our crime is so low because weapons are deterrents against using them. [http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-08-28T174254Z_01_L28348938_RTRUKOC_0_US-WORLD-FIREARMS.xml&src=rss&rpc=22&sp=true">USA Today]
• Iran's crazypants leader Ahmadinejad is not only a great cook, he's prepared to (fill the Iraqi power) vacuum and also that jacket is so totally contraband American Apparel. (Ha ha, "contra")
• The market sucked again. Time to invest in tent mortgage lenders!