• If you have been hiding under a rock this weekend, the Obamas got their Portuguese Water Dog, Bo, from the Kennedys, and tons of awwws erupted around the blogosphere. [Washington Post]

• Newt Gingrich thinks you're sorta stupid for caring. [CNN]
• In other news you can't escape, Obama is being congratulated on his first foreign policy victory for the Navy's ability to shoot 3 dudes on a boat because "foreign policy victory" is always equivalent to "dead bodies of non-Americans" and not, say, "getting Iran to agree to nuclear talks" which is what he did last week. [Huffington Post, BBC]
• Rick Warren cancelled his Sunday morning show appearances because he was exhausted from all his lying. [Politico]
• Barack Obama's half-brother, Samson, was denied a visa to Britain because he was charged with sexual assault and fled the country. [Reuters]
• Arizona State University is happy to have the President give its commencement address this year but, like John McCain, has dubbed him too inexperienced to be awarded an honorary degree. Guess John McCain has a few friends at ASU, huh? [Washington Post]
• Obama turned down throwing out the first pitch at today's Washington Nationals home-opener. [Washington Post]
• Ari Fleischer is sick of poor people all being too poor to pay their damn taxes. Pay up, assholes! [Wall Street Journal]
• Republicans are pushing legislation to make sure that people who inherit up to $10 million from their families don't have to keep paying taxes on it. [NY Times]
• Like Democrats, they probably don't care that the banks that got your tax dollars are also raising interest rates and fees because they all use the Congressional Federal Credit Union. [Wall Street Journal]
• Goldman Sachs is using your tax dollars to try to shut down a blogger who is critical of their company. [Telegraph]
• Paul Krugman thinks it's mean to make fun of crazy people, and Republicans are crazy. Paul Krugman obviously wants me to lose my job. [NY Times]
• And not even Rahm Emanuel is mean enough to save it anymore. [Washington Post]
• Today is the White House's annual Easter Egg Roll. Images to come!

MEGAN: Hey, it's finally Friday! I get to sleep in tomorrow!

JASON Hey. Me too! So remember how everyone said, "OMGZ. You have to stop attacking Sarah Palin! It only makes her stronger?"

MEGAN: Actually, I think I said, please stop attacking her because it makes us look bad. And, specifically, please stop attacking her for gendered reasons.

JASON Well, certain criticisms, especially gendered criticisms, do make us look bad. Substantive ones, however, work.

MEGAN: Also helpful: getting a Republican Senator to say that saying she has foreign policy experience is an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

JASON Yeppers! Hagel's just the latest conservative to do so, following David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer (what Teutonic supervillain hasn't dreamed of calling himself DER KRAUTHAMMER), and, of course, the off-camera Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan. Those guys make Palin-contrarianism okay for others, though you watch - Brooks will change his mind as soon as the wind changes direction: you need to be humming "Personal Jesus" in order to have more depeche mode than Brooks. And, of course, Tina Fey has made it okay to make fun of Palin. Even Palin can do it, with the sound down!

MEGAN: Speaking of Peggy...

Hoover was not good for the Republican brand.

And the Democrats are mean for trying to turn Bush into Hoover because GWB has been soooo good for the Republican brand. Just as Tom Davis.

JASON She seems awash in contradiction:

Both the Democrats and the Republicans spent the week treating the catastrophe as a political opportunity. This was unserious. A serious approach might have addressed large questions such as: Was this crisis not, at bottom, a failure of stewardship?

Instead, from Barack Obama: It's the Republicans' fault, and John McCain means more of the same. From McCain: We're reformers and we'll clean up the mess, unlike Mr. I Can't Think of Anything to Do but Raise Taxes.

It seems to me that Obama, in this case, is...I dunno — pointing out the BAD STEWARDSHIP.

MEGAN: Uhh, but then she sorta goes here:

A fearless prediction: My beautiful election enters its dark phase.

Lots of signs of the new darkness. Mr. Obama's army is swarming, blocking lines when Obama critics show up for radio interviews. A study out Thursday said the Obama campaign has become more negative than the McCain campaign.

At least she didn't call it a "black" phase.

Oh, and here's the best rationale she can come up with of how "constrained" McCain will be if he wins (so go ahead and vote for him, you know ya wanna):

A New York liberal leaning toward Mr. McCain told me this week he has no fear that Mr. McCain may be a more militant figure than Mr. Obama. We already have two wars, "we're out of army." Even if Mr. McCain wanted a war, he said, he couldn't start one.

Ah, the old "scarce resources" argument. Sure, we could never, like, institute a draft. Start a new Cold War by being super-hawkish on Russia. We would never start a third war when we've already got troops in 2, totally not. So, Vote McCain! Since he can't start a third war his first day in office.

JASON Oy. Noonan. Let's all make the election "beautiful" again. Maybe she hasn't noticed the creepy "Drill, Baby, Drill" chants?

MEGAN: Maybe she has, and they made certain parts of her tingly?

JASON The problem we have is not that we can't start new wars. It's that we can't finish them.

MEGAN: We start new ones to distract from the fact that we haven't finished the old ones. Oh, hey, speaking of unfinished wars.

JASON HA. Yeah. See. That's how you go to war without an army. People forget about the Contras. And the, uhm...mujahadeen.

By the way, according to an email I just received (so take it with a grain of salt, because my inbox gets filled with apocrypha, spam, and letters authored by Matt Stoller), Ari Fleischer on the Today show this morning said that the financial crisis was basically the public's fault. [He did. I heard him. -Ed.] Y'all borrowed all this money!

MEGAN: Yeah, it's no longer "America, Fuck Yeah!" it's now "America, Fuck You!"
Fuck you for believing George Bush when he asked you to spend our way out of the first recession to keep the terrorists from winning.

Fuck you for buying houses you couldn't afford as everyone in and out of government told you prices would go up forever and ever.

Fuck you for taking on credit card debt to finance groceries and big screen TVs and everything else you thought you needed when what you really needed was to buy some fucking Big Boy Bootstraps and make enough money to not bother John McCain.

JASON Ahh, but you have to admire Fleischer. He's a pure shithead and he knows it. He's utter, sucking venality and he embraces it!

MEGAN: Ari Fleischer can go Fuck Himself.

JASON Ari Fleischer has already been there and back.

MEGAN: Ari Fleischer must be an extremely flexible person. Please note that I did not call him a "man."

JASON Noted!

MEGAN: Moving on from Ari Fleischer's amazing ability to toss his own salad (he does like it spicy and a little earthy), the polls show us white women are realizing that maybe, just maybe, McCain doesn't have our best interests at heart even if he does have one of us on the ticket, and are swinging back to Obama.

JASON Right. This is, I think, a by-product of the fact that Palin's appeal is waning, and more women are learning about McCain's stand on issues that matter to them. Months ago, researchers found wide variance in whether women were simply aware of McCain's opinion, and posited that once they knew, they'd shy away. What's going on with the white men, though? And, I'm asking!

MEGAN: Daddy issues?

JASON Because it seems to me, the Palin pick ought to hurt McCain there, too.

MEGAN: Do men vote for candidates they sort of want to sleep with?

JASON I mean, if Palin was a bona fide Margaret Thatcher type, you'd think that'd play better.

MEGAN: See, I don't know, I feel like the Palin-lovers are the same guys that were running around screaming "cankles" 6 months ago, you know?

JASON And texting you!

MEGAN: Oh, God, you know that asshole is voting for McCain. In fact, I do know because I got a Facebook news feed that told me so!

JASON And doing the other 19 things to ensure NO SEXING.

MEGAN: He was also numbers 1 and 11.

JASON You are totally right. Yikes. It was Tucker Bounds, wasn't it?

MEGAN: Tucker Bounds would've probably been an improvement. I believe Ana Marie and I determined he's just a dirty little sub that likes to be humiliated. I think, the dudes who are all into Palin now, it's some combination of chickenhawkishness that appeals to them about McCain, some sort of boastful "I could survive Viet Cong torture too, motherfucahhhh!" and some combination of that, to that kind of lame, text-messaging, small-dicked asshole Sarah Palin is indeed the kind of woman they'd like to think they could attract and even date. The difficulty with that is that Sarah Palin wouldn't put up with their shit, either. You see Todd yesterday? The whole time in Iowa on stage, there was this hot blonde totally checking him out and he didn't even notice. That's because Sarah doesn't fuck around and he knows it. We can at least give her credit for that.

JASON Word.

MEGAN: Okay, also, with all these "give money to Planned Parenthood in Palin's name" things floating around, I would like to now encourage an actual dirty trick that could hurt the "Palin" campaign.

JASON Because it mostly is the Palin campaign, now. Though Ana Marie said that in Wisconsin last night, people didn't walk out when McCain spoke.

MEGAN: Bob Barr, who is on the ballot in 44 states and suing to get on 5 more probably needs money. And, obviously, the biggest donors to Nader in 2000 were Republicans. Barr has the potential to spoil at least Georgia, if not places like Ohio and Florida. If you've got extra cash and you want to fuck with the Republicans in more than a symbolic way, swallow, swallow, swallow that bile and give to Bob Barr. But only if you are maxed out to Obama.

JASON Yeah, exactly. I agree. I mean, if i were an Obama supporter who'd maxed out my donations, I would totes give to Barr. All those people who are making cool YouTube ads for Obama? Take a minute and do one up for Barr, too.

MEGAN: That's how a real dirty trick works. Well, that and this way, which is a great example of how Republicans are trying to disenfranchise voters in swing states besides Michigan.

JASON Right. You get all sorts of things like this. I remember a few elections ago, up in Baltimore? People woke up on election day to postcards that said stuff like you couldn't vote if you were late with the rent and shit. If the Dems are smart, they have people going door-to-door, laying this mythology bare right now.

MEGAN: Also, if you are challenged at your polling place, fight the fuck back. Think of it as pissing on Tucker Bounds. Everyone wins!

ANA MARIE: I AM AWAKE!

MEGAN: Hooray! I am too. Are you appropriately grumpy about it?

ANA MARIE: Could be worse. We could be talking about BLOGGING AND POLITICS.

MEGAN: Like, oh my God, Ana, when are bloggers going to get ethics like real journalists?

ANA MARIE: As soon as we gain enough power to mislead a country into a stupid war.
The best thing about this election so far, I have to say, is not so much that the press has goaded itself into becoming more watchdog-y, but that they're doing the watchdogging with such petulant snarkiness. Almost like bloggers. From the NYT's editorial board blog yesterday:

What’s Spanish for ‘Lies’?
By The Editorial Board

It's "mentiras," I think, but I'm sure that's not the point!

MEGAN: It is way more than I thought, since I was too busy laughing at the thought of the New York Times editorial board getting so upset that John McCain was misleading voters. I guess it's a fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice and we'll publish a number of glowing pieces about how Saddam has nukes kind of thing.

ANA MARIE: Almost like he was exaggerating the threats posed by Iraq or something!
Fool me three times and we'll write a snarky blog post! THAT WILL SHOW HIM.

MEGAN: What if all the newspapers became actually snarky? Like, what if they decided that the only way to compete with new media was to out-blog us? Would The Onion have to become an outlet of serious journalism? Would democracy as we know it die? (You did see that article about how cynicism is killing democracy...)

ANA MARIE: WHAT IF NICK DENTON RAN THE NYT? I think we would develop a shortage of first-hand journalism. But EVERYONE would know who Julia Allison is.

MEGAN: You don't need to leave your desk to know stuff, obviously! Wait, are there people who don't know about Julia Allison yet? I thought she was part of the citizenship exam by now.

ANA MARIE: She's actually being launched into space soon. So that she's, like, one of the first things aliens learn about us. You know: Beethoven, math... Julia Allison.

MEGAN: They'll like her better than math, that's for sure. Gawker certainly does.

ANA MARIE: There's some kind of segue between Julia and this about Tucker Bounds, but I'm still coffee-less, so I'll let you make it. They really need to stop sending the twelve-year-old intern out to the morning shows. Or cable shows, I mean. I think I was thinking "morning show" because he's getting his ass kicked, in all cases, by heavily rougued faux-next-girls! GIRLS!

MEGAN: Actually, the man just needs to, like, fucking prepare before he goes. Your candidate is out lying like he's Dick Cheney or something, you gotta put your big boy panties on just like Ari Fleischer did and take it. I think the real problem is that Tucker Bounds likes getting spanked by hot women.

ANA MARIE: YOU CAN TOTALLY TELL. He totally knows the shit the campaign is trying to pull and just enjoys being called on it. "TELL ME AGAIN HOW WE LIE, CAMPBELL. MAKE IT HURT."

MEGAN: "I know I've been naughty, Megyn. Tell me I've been naughty."

ANA MARIE: Oh, breaking!

Senator McCain, on a round of seven morning shows, says on CNBC’s Squawk Box that he favors a 9/11-commission-style body to look into the Wall Street meltdown: “Everybody’s at fault here – the regulatory agencies, who were clearly asleep at the stick … That’s why I think maybe we ought to have a 9/11 commission type thing, because this crisis is very serious and … certainly a threat to our economy. … I understand the economy. I was chairman of the Commerce Committee that oversights every part of our economy. I have a far, far longer record of addressing these issue than my opponent does. And I certainly don’t think we should raise taxes in these difficult times.”

MEGAN: Is oversight a verb?

ANA MARIE: Look, he was a POW, ok? He is allowed to verb anything.

MEGAN: Wait, John McCain was tortured? I didn't know that.

ANA MARIE: Do you think somewhere lying around the WH is a memo entitled, "Wall Street Determined to Strike Inside the US"?

MEGAN: So, by the way, the 9/11 Commission report only took a year to commission and two to write, which means McCain's financial crisis commission will issue its report on the current financial crisis in 2011, which is 2 years before McCain wants to start pulling troops out of Iraq but possibly a little late to have any effect on the deepening financial crisis. But, read his lips: No New Taxes.

ANA MARIE: Speaking of which, I actually wrote someone on the McCain campaign yesterday to ask if the candidate had finished Alan Greenspan's book by now.

MEGAN: And did you get a response that wasn't vetted 15 ways from Sunday?

ANA MARIE: Er, yes.

MEGAN: I wonder if Steve Schmidt has taken away everyone's BlackBerries.

ANA MARIE: Maybe he's just installed some kind of filter. The answer I got was, basically, "Fuck off." It was a little nicer than that.

MEGAN: I think, then, that Steve Schmidt is controlling everyone's BlackBerries.

ANA MARIE: No, Steve would have actually written "Fuck off." He's from Jersey, you know, where that is a term of endearment.

MEGAN: Maybe that's the filter! He types "fuck off" and a computer somewhere translates it into something polite. I could totally use one of those, if they made it into one of those little boxes you use to talk after throat cancer surgery.

ANA MARIE: Speaking of cancer (I'm getting better at segues!): Bristol Palin's tanning bed.

MEGAN: I was just thinking, actually, that Todd looks equally suspiciously tan for the start of winter. But he works outside, if he wanted to submit to a tan line inspection to prove it's not from the bed, I'm happy to judge.

ANA MARIE: Wait, isn't he part Eskimo? Does that make your question racist?

MEGAN: He's like an eighth or something? I have been too busy noticing that he's cute and kind of silent which is how I too prefer the cute men.

ANA MARIE: And I think he's also controlling and a little insane. He's perfect for you!

MEGAN: Insane, definitely! I try to only date the mentally ill, it makes it so much easier to blame the break-ups on them. Controlling, well, that shit just annoys me in about 2 seconds. I dumped a guy once for questioning who I was talking to on the telephone.

ANA MARIE: So you probably wouldn't let him, say, write your state budget, huh?

MEGAN: I probably wouldn't let him know the balance in our joint checking account.

ANA MARIE: So here's a question: What are the gender politics of Todd being so up in his wife's business, as it were?

MEGAN: Well, metaphorically speaking, I am all for Todd being all up in his wife's business.

ANA MARIE: I am actually quite sure that they have hot Christian sex all the time.

MEGAN: But, other than that, it's a little weird on a state level. Especially because state budgets are really complex and stuff, and I don't recall Todd having a degree in public management or accounting. Or anything, really.

ANA MARIE: So when HRC got all up in Bill's (completely literal) business, that was ok... Because she was sharing expertise.

MEGAN: Well, only it wasn't, right? Because then she was a nagging, first-wifely harpy. At least that was the Republican talking point...

ANA MARIE: It was. And now the Dem talking point looks like it might be, "Todd is pulling all the strings, a bullying, first-dudely Machiavelli." From my friend Mike's admittedly amusing Salon piece, out last night:

"No one has accused Todd Palin of interfering in state business for his own personal benefit — instead, the situation has remained somewhat inscrutable, if not odd. According to local politicos and observers, he lurks around the capitol if he doesn't have anything better to do, which, since he works seasonal jobs in oil and fishing, is fairly often."

MEGAN: I love how he's "lurking." And that with 4 and now 5 kids at home, he doesn't have anything better to do.

ANA MARIE: But here's the thing: switch the genders — our standard mode of cultural critique this year, practically so mandatory that I'm thinking Chris and I will just go as each other for Halloween — and what do you think? "Sarah Palin, with 5 kids at home, has no right lurking around her husband's place of work like she has any idea what's going on."

MEGAN: I'm of two minds, as I am with everything else. On the one hand, free advice is good. Free decision-making, not so good.

ANA MARIE: I agree. It's just really awesome to see Rs having to grapple with this. I wrote a piece a couple of months ago about how, along with Woodstock and the moon landing, another major event McCain missed while in prison (yes, he was in a Vietnamese prison! true story!) was the women's movement, which is obviously where a lot of these questions were first framed on a national level. He's totally having to make up for lost time, in a way, but without any of the intellectual or historical work that went into the first round of discussions.

MEGAN: I think a lot of her politicians missed the women's movement in some pretty significant ways.

ANA MARIE: They weren't even really the "first" of course.
Well, yes. But do you get what I mean about how the R's new-found feminism is missing a lot of the context and thoughtfulness that, well, makes it a real argument rather than a talking point?

MEGAN: Well, I think the Republican party's newfound "feminism" is born of, oh, God, too early, what's the word that means you're taking advantage of the situation? Anyway, I think the Republican party hasn't found feminism.

ANA MARIE: You're right. Or, rather, they've just found the word "sexism."

MEGAN: They've found the power of the word sexism to attract a certain class of voters.

ANA MARIE: Well, weirdly, it's not! I mean, HRC supporters ARE NOT flocking to Palin

MEGAN: And they've discovered the sheer joy of Schadenfreude, watching all of this. No, they're not flocking if they are committed Dems, but I think plenty of Hillary supporters weren't committed Dems.

ANA MARIE: The sexism charge is mainly working as a proxy for the standard "media bias" charge. Which is as old as the hills, though not as old as John McCain.

MEGAN: I think the sexism charge is connecting hard with Republican women, bringing up old grievances with feminists and the feminist movement connected to their life choices. The idea that feminists disrespect women who stay home with the kids or are pro-life, those feelings.

ANA MARIE: So, really, they're just co-opting the words. We're not actually having a productive discussion.

MEGAN: It's politics! Productive discussions aren't allowed.

ANA MARIE: Which makes it a perfect time to segue back into Julia Allison!

MEGAN: Um, she called herself a journalist.

ANA MARIE: But, and this is important:

"I don't want people to think that I think I'm Woodward and Bernstein."

Which sort of makes me think she's actually Sarah Palin.

MEGAN: I believe journalism just died. Actually, I think she slunk into its hospital room, climbed on it's bed, slapped it around, smothered it with a pillow and then stabbed it 39 times for emphasis.

ANA MARIE: I was just thinking: I think Julia Allison had sex with journalism, THEN killed it. It's the best end journalism can hope for. It would be much worse to have sex with Woodward and Bernstein before dying.