[Kittanning, Pennsylvania; August 13. Image via Getty]

KITTANNING, PA - AUGUST 13: Both protestors and supporters of health care reform demonstrate on the parking lot outside of a town hall meeting hosted by Senator Arlen Specter on August 13, 2009 in Kittanning, Pennsylvania. Specter held the town hall meeting to speak with local residents about health care reform. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

[Lebanon, Pennsylvania; August 11. Image via Getty]

LEBANON, PA - AUGUST 11: Katy Weeks (C) of Philadelphia holds a sign as she waits in line to attend a town hall meeting held by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter August 11, 2009 in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Specter held the town hall meeting to speak about health care reform. (Photo by Chris Gardner/Getty Images)

• Barack Obama, after his meeting with Angela Merkel, will visit the ruins of the Buchenwald concentration camp. He will likely not compare our re-purposing of Abu Ghraib to the Russian's post-war re-purposing of Buchenwald for political prisoners. [UPI, Huffington Post]

• Obama is heading to France after that, where he's meeting Michelle and the girls. [MSNBC]
• Perhaps he's going in order to help him forget about the crazy guy from Utah trying to assassinate him. [Huffington Post]
• Or the fact that his Attorney General is having to release a bunch more Alaska Republicans convicted of corruption because the prosecution by Bush's Justice Department was even more corrupt than the politicians. [NY Times]
• One of the other corrupt Republicans prosecuted by Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department, Bob Ney, now has a radio show and wants to see Alberto Gonzales waterboarded...to prove it's not really torture, of course. [ThinkProgress]
• During a week when corrupt former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has his wife eating spiders in Costa Rica with Speidi to pay the bills he once fulfilled through bribery, waterboarding Alberto Gonzales doesn't seem that extreme. [Politico]
• My definition of "extreme" may have been altered by reading this recap and review of Glenn Beck's "comedy" tour. [NY Times]
• Judge Sonia Sotomayor's supporting documentation has been delivered to the Senate early, which won't stop Republicans from claiming they don't have enough time to read it before their summer vacations. [MSNBC]
• Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, having locked up the support of most senior Democrats and killed most primary challenges, now says he doesn't know if he'll vote for Sotomayor. Seriously, dude's starting to seem a little crazy, right? [Politico]
• But, with unemployment in America at nearly 10 percent, the one thing Arlen Specter won't do is quit his job. [NY Times]

• Senate Minorityi Leader Mitch McConnell doesn't think it's his place to stop or chastise prominent Republicans who are running around screaming, "Racist!" at Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Of course, McConnell doesn't think a lot of things are his place, up to and including holding the Republican Senator majority. [ThinkProgress]

• Newly minted Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions, wishes Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan would shut the fuck up, because he'd like to screw up Sotomayor's nomination without going down in history as yet another unreconstructed racist Southern Senator. [ThinkProgress]
• South Carolina Senator and John McCain fanboy Lindsey Graham managed to ask Sotomayor for an apology for being prejudiced against him as a white man, earning himself some praise and showing his colleagues how this racism shit is actually done. [The Hill]
• His predecessor, newly minted Democratic Senator Arlen Specter, finally got his lines right and backed Sotomayor's nomination. [AlterNet]
• President Obama thinks the Republicans should shut the fuck up about all of it already. [Washington Post]
• The Chinese government wanted House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi to get with its propaganda program during her visit to China, but she's Nancy Pelosi, so she didn't. [Politico]
• Norm Coleman's getting his hearing in Minnesota's Supreme Court today over his efforts to overturn the electoral will of Minnesotans and stay in the Senate. [Politico]
• The Obama Administration is asking the Supreme Court to uphold lower court rulings that families of 9/11 victims can't sue the Saudi royal family over the attacks. [NY Times]
• GM will file for bankruptcy today in exchange for $30 billion dollars. Where can I sign up for that deal? [The Hill]

• Nancy Pelosi admits she knew about waterboarding, but says her job was to get Democrats elected... and accused the CIA of lying to her. [Washington Post]

• While you're in the midst of feeling disappointed, don't forget that Barack Obama has promised to keep prosecuting Gitmo detainees in special military tribunals. (And, in an undisclosed location, Dick Cheney jizzes in his pants.) [CBS News]
• BTW: The CIA is refusing to declassify the documents Cheney wanted. [Politico]
• Attorney Eric Holder admits they're keeping tribunals because Republicans have convinced people that, without military tribunals, Gitmo detainees will be chillin' in Kansas. [Newsday]
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates is way less gleeful than his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, about sending Americans off to die. [Time]
• We're still going to keep funding those wars! [Washington Post]
• By the way, that whole "insurers are going to gouge you marginally less" thing Obama was touting? The health insurance industry is now saying its not going to keep to it. [NY Times]
• Right-wing crazy Michael Savage wants Hillary Clinton to convince the British government that he's not a hate-monger. Ha! [ThinkProgress]
• Prosecutors will be interviewing Karl Rove today, and Karl Rove will say nothing useful to anyone but himself. [Washington Post]
• Arlen Specter's 2010 Democratic opponent has dropped out of the race. [Huffington Post]
• In unrelated news, Specter has indicated he'll probably be willing to back the Employee Free Choice Act for that sweet (and slightly-sweaty) union embrace. [Huffington Post]
• Oh god: Teabagging 2.0? [ThinkProgress]
• Not surprisingly, one of the founders of the "movement "is a tax cheat who really, really doesn't want to have to pay. [TeaBlogging]

• Rielle Hunter's friends don't recall the videographer's affair with John Edwards ending in December 2006. One says, "I'm not sure what men tell their wives about their mistresses represents the most accurate portrayal." [Huffington Post]

• Newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter forgot that he isn't a Republican any more and told a reporter that he was backing Norm Coleman's bid to prevent a filibuster-proof majority all the way to the Supreme Court. [NY Times]
• Then he took it back. [Talking Points Memo]
• Then the Democrats stripped him of all his seniority because, for whatever reason, they don't trust him, his motivations or his willingness to vote their way! [Washington Post]
• Someone else the Administration doesn't trust: Mayor of Kabul Afghan President Hamid Karzai. With that pro-rape law and drug-dealing relatives, that's no big surprise. [Washington Post]
• The United Kingdom doesn't trust right-wing nutbag Michael Savage not to incite ethnic, religious and other violence so it won't let him visit; he's now suing British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to prove he's not a psycho. [Reuters]
• In other psycho news, Michele Bachmann charged Barack Obama with enslaving the nation's youth. [ThinkProgress]
• Mitt Romney, who recently cracked a sexist joke about how Time's list of influential people was really only a beauty contest, was actually one of People's "Most Beautiful People" once upon a time. [Huffington Post]
• Some Mormon had Barack Obama's mother posthumously baptized against the will of her family in the middle of the campaign. [AmericaBlog]
• The Mormons are investigating, which means they're hoping the issue will die down aso they can go back to funding efforts to keep same sex couples from getting married. [Politico]
• Some Bush lawyers might get disbarred for twisting the law in an attempt to make torture legal, but they probably won't get prosecuted. [NY Times]
• The Obama Administration won't announce its replacement for Justice Souter this week. [Huffington Post]
• Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has agreed to be the GOP's token, rather than its real leader, and will give up the sole actual power the RNC Chair actually has (meaning: the purse strings). [Washington Times]
• Uh-oh: Joe Biden just found out why it's a crappy idea to appoint a caretaker Senator so that your son can run for your seat in two years: Beau Biden, despite his tour in Iraq, is trailing Republican Congressman Mike Castle in the polls by 21 points. [Politico]

• Elizabeth Edwards (and her cheat-of-a-husband John) sat down separately with Oprah Winfrey for an interview that will be televised later and appear in O. Elizabeth asked that Oprah not use the mistress's name. [Associated Press]

• Someone is apparently going to file an ethics complaint against notorious anti-choice Governor Sarah Palin for saying that she backs a parental consent ballot initiative, as though there's some doubt that she feels exactly that way. [ThinkProgress]
• Palin is also going to be part of the GOP's "re-branding" efforts, as though her brand recognition among moderates and independents isn't part of what's wrong with the GOP brand. [Politico]
• Michelle Bachmann doesn't like the idea of White House orgies or wads being blown... but she sure does think about them a lot. [Politico]
• Caroline Kennedy dropped out of the Senate race because her kids thought the stress was making her a bitch. [NY Post]
• Maybe if she'd said that earlier, David Paterson's approval ratings wouldn't be in the toilet and Attorney General Andrew "Shucking And Jiving Is Not A Racist Term" Cuomo wouldn't look like the next governor. [Politico]
• Switch-hitting Senator Arlen Specter is now going to face at least one Democratic primary challenge in Pennsylvania because of the whole "not going to be a loyal Democrat thing" and his unwillingness to change his mind on the Employee Free Choice Act and health care, even though he only took those positions to stave off a primary challenge when he was a Republican. [Plum Line]
• And although he is swearing he never promised fealty to the Democrats, everyone else says that he did. That is why no one in Washington ever really trusts a party-switcher. [Plum Line]
• Now that Republicans realize that Pat Toomey probably can't take the state, they are lining up against Toomey in the primary, including former governor Tim Ridge. [Washington Post]
• Joe The Plumber doesn't want "queer" people around his kids, so he's turning over custody of them to his wife and vowing never to see them again. What? He himself defined queer as "strange and unusual," so it obviously fits! [ThinkProgress]
• Republicans have agreed that Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions will get to lead the charge against Obama's judicial nominees until 2010, when Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley will take over. [The Hill]
• Oh, and brace yourself: we're about to give a shitload more money to the banks. [Wall Street Journal]

• Sarah Palin appears on American Chopper tonight to laud the patriotism of Paul Teutul and his son, Paul Jr., as well as invite them to her fishin' hole. That's not a euphemism. [ThinkProgress]

• At last night's primetime press conference, Barack Obama said he thinks waterboarding is torture, regardless of what Sean Hannity or a bunch of self-serving, legacy-protecting GOP asswipes say. [Reuters]
• Condoleezza Rice says that since President Bush was fine with the waterboarding, and that obviously torture wasn't illegal, despite the fact that Nixon tried that excuse once and was excoriated until he had the good sense to die. [Huffington Post]
• President Obama is also concerned about Pakistan becoming more of a clusterfuck than it already is. See? He's paying attention! [NY Times]
• One thing he wasn't paying attention to last night was Fox News. [Politico]
• Republicans are pointing fingers at one another following Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter's departure from the GOP, with even Senator Orrin Hatch suggesting that GOP donor dollars might be better directed at defeating Democrats in general elections than defeating moderate Republicans in primaries with candidates that can't win general elections. Who I would ever pronounce Orrin Hatch the shining intellectual light of the GOP? [Politico]
• Despite what she may believe, Meghan McCain, is no intellectual light of the GOP. Also, people write her mean e-mails. [Daily Beast]
• Only 20 percent of Americans currently identify as Republican. [Plum Line]
• Which is, of course, why some GOP officials are trying to strip GOP Chairman Michael Steele of any actual power within the Republican National Committee. You can't be a token if you have any real power to change anything! [Politico]
• The prosecutions of the Bush Administration's biggest pro-torture advocates are apparently back on in Spain. [Daily Beast]
• The House passed a federal hate crimes bill for LGBT Americans yesterday, but not without Alcee Hastings reading a list of sex acts an unidentified GOP colleague tried to make sure weren't covered under the bill — including pedophilia, necrophilia and zoophilia. Yes, apparently there are Republicans who still believe that homosexuality is exactly like assaulting corpses and/or children and/or animals. [NY Times, Huffington Post]
• While that was going on, North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx called the Matthew Shepard murder a "hoax". [Huffington Post]
• In the meantime, the New Hampshire Senate voted to legalize same-sex marriage there, giving a metaphorical finger to assholes like Virginia Foxx and Carrie Prejean. [NY Times]

• This week's New York Times Magazine cover story on Obama's first hundred days doesn't look exceptionally celebratory. It looks more like, "This is what 100 days as President will do to you." [NY Times]

• Washington continues to buzz about Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter's party-switch, which even the White House didn't learn about until yesterday morning despite Joe Biden's efforts to get him to do it. [Washington Post]
• But in 2001, Specter blasted then-Senator Jim Jeffords for his party-switching; he even tried to make it illegal. [LA Times]
• Michael Steele's pissed off about the Specter switch because he was going to back Specter in the primary...which is probably partly what Specter was worried about. [Politico]
• Rush Limbuagh wants John and Meghan McCain to switch parties now, too. [Huffington Post]
• Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine thinks assholes like Limbaugh are part of why the party is losing voters in droves and Senators in dribs and drabs. [NY Times]
• Specter's desertion means that Norm Coleman shall never surrender his fight to have the courts declare him the winner of the Minnesota Senate Race. [Politico]
• Speaking of Minnesota, Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann thinks that the outbreak of swine flu is either a Democratic conspiracy, the result of God hating Democratic Presidents or poor management by Democrats. [ThinkProgress]
• Less insanity regarding American health: The Senate finally approved the nomination of Kathleen Sebelius to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, despite Republican opposition to the fact that a pro-choice President picked a pro-choice nominee for the gig. [Reuters]
• Keith Olbermann, like much of America, would really, really like to see Sean Hannity waterboarded. [USA Today]
• However, no one wants to see former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich take Moonlight Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof's offer of an apprenticeship. [PR Newswire]
• And, apparently, Pat Buchanan likened a Nazi war criminal to Jesus; in Pat's world, killing 29,000 of his fellow Jews is What Jesus Would Do. [Huffington Post]

• Barack Obama gave yet another prime time press conference to beat back critics of his budget, his tax plans and the deficit those things might or might not create. [Politico, Washington Post]

• Oh, look, Obama finally got himself a confirmed Commerce Secretary. Guess he buried those bodies really deep. [NY Times]
• Everybody loves Hillary Clinton these days. [CNN]
• Little-loved Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal doesn't want everything Obama does to fail, just most things. That's the only way he can win in 2012, after all. [Huffington Post]
• A bunch of conservative Catholics are complaining about the President of the United States giving a commencement speech and getting an honorary degree from Notre Dame because apparently to get a degree from a Catholic university is to agree to agree with everything the Pope ever says on everything. Makes me really not regret my decision to go to BC. [Washington Post]
• One of the people complaining is the twice-divorced and about-to-be-Catholic Newt Gingrich, because while telling your cancer-ridden wife that you want to marry your mistress at your wife's hospital bedside is a Catholic value, striving to reduce the incidence of abortion through education and economic empowerment while keeping it legal is not. [Media Matters]
• Arlen Specter hasn't yet decided to run for re-election as an Independent, so he's bowing to business interests and fucking over the labor unions that endorsed him over the Democratic candidate in 2004 by opposing the Employee Free Choice Act, known to conservative interests at "card check." It's so hard being the swing vote, you know, he can't just do what he thinks is right every time. [The Hill]
• He's already trailing in primary polling against the more conservative Republican that took him on in 2004. [Huffington Post]
• Health insurance companies promise to stop fucking you over if Barack Obama promises to make you buy their insurance. [LA Times]
• Under the Bush Administration, if your boss refused to pay you, you were on your own, asshole. Luckily for us, the people that felt that way were career bureaucrats who can't be fired. [NY Times]

• Now that it's been a full year of shitty economic news, we are officially in a recession and have been for a year. Aren't you glad to know? [MSNBC]
• The market is not glad to know, and it slid almost 700 points after learning the obvious. [NY Times]
• In other obvious news, Condoleezza Rice doesn't plan to give much advice to Hillary Clinton. What advice she does give, we're guessing Clinton doesn't plan on following. [MSNBC]
• Bill Clinton is pretty happy about Hillary's nomination, though. [Real Clear Politics]

• White people at CNN just don't know 'bout Susan Rice, our soon-to-be Ambassador to the UN. [Think Progress]
• Joe Biden gave his first post-election speech today, so people wouldn't forget that he's about to be VP. [Politico]
• Palin talked, too, at a rally for Saxby Chambliss, so people wouldn't forget that she wanted to be VP before she wanted to be President. [Politico]
• Saxby Chambliss pervily grabbed himself some incestuous tween side-boob in a new commercial. [Indecision 2008]
• The Department of Homeland Security is more fucked up than watching Saxby Chambliss feel his tween granddaughter's breast. [Boston Globe]
• LGBT rights organization Impact-Florida plans to protest Governor Charlie Crist's (fey, if not gay) marriage this weekend, because protesting breeder weddings is a good plan to get more voters on your side. [The Sun Coast News]
• The cherub-faced Chairman of the FCC, Kevin Martin, wants to force the winner of a new wireless auction to set aside a portion of its win for free, porn-free wifi. Apparently, Republicans are all into not regulating the market until it comes to porn, when they get are regulatory up in there. [Silicon Alley Insider]
• Former Clintonista Phil Singer thinks Chris Matthews should get off the air if he's going to start campaigning for Arlen Specter's Senate seat. [Politico]
• Tina Brown thinks Rachel Maddow should get the coveted Meet The Press chair, among other, non-boring people. [Daily Beast]
• With Hillary Clinton's imminent resignation from her Senate seat, two names keep popping up: New York Attorney General Andrew "Shucking And Jiving Is Not A Racist Term, I Swear" Cuomo and Bill Clinton. And you thought nothing could get you to vote for Bill again. [The Hill, CNN]

• The California Supreme Court this afternoon granted a hearing to the Prop 8 opponents' challenge to the ballot measure that eliminated same sex marriage rights in the state. It did not, however, issue a stay that would have allowed same sex marriages to continue. [Equality California, California Supreme Court (pdf)]
• Missouri finally finished counting its votes and has narrowly gone for McCain. Obama still gets to be President, though. [Politico]
• A judge has ruled that Al Franken's campaign is entitled to written reasons why certain absentee ballots were rejected, which is expected to help his efforts to oust Norm Coleman. I'd bet the voters whose votes were rejected would like to know that sort of thing, too. [Politico]
• But the Dow fell again, so we're all pretty well screwed for now no matter what. [Huffington Post]

• Not as screwed as the automakers, who aren't going to get their piece of the bailout pie, a quest that was not helped by Mitt Romney— the primary candidate who won Michigan by kissing their asses earlier this year — saying that they should be allowed to go bankrupt. [NY Times, NY Times]
• And the auto industry's favorite Democrat, Michigan Congressman John Dingell — who has been chairing the Commerce Committee to their benefit for 2 years — lost a preliminary vote to keep his Committee chairmanship to upstart Congressman Henry Waxman. So it's really been a shitty week for them so far. [Politico]
• But they are definitely not as screwed as Republican crackpot John Ziegler, who decided to give an interview about his crappy new poll that says all Obama voters are poorly informed to Jezebel Crush Object Nate Silver and ended up, in the face of Silver's superior brain, telling him, "Go fuck yourself." Don't mess with our man, John Ziegler. [FiveThirtyEight]
• In a fit of crazy, Michelle Bachmann blithely declared that she never said that thing about investigating Congress members for being un-American that everyone heard her say. [Politico]
• Even crazier is Joe the Motherfucking Plumber, who has an enormous crush on Sarah Palin. Hustler, are you listening? [Huffington Post]
• Nearly two weeks after it was first reported, Obama's people have confirmed that strategist David Axelrod will join his Administration as a senior adviser along with Greg Craig as White House counsel. [Reuters]
• Dick Cheney has been indicted — along with former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — on state charges in Texas that his financial interests in Vanguard Group (which runs some prisons there) are tantamount to participating in that company's abuse of power. Don't get your hopes up: prosecutor Juan Guerra "has a history of launching eccentric court and political battles," as though that needed to be said. [The Telegraph]
• Republican Senator Arlen Specter announced today that he plans to fuck with presumed Obama AG nominee Eric Holder about his role in the Marc Rich pardon at the end of the Clinton Administration, as though any of his constituents care. Apparently, Specter is fully prepared to hop on the train to Crazy Partisan Town with the rest of the Republican Party and ignore his many years as a moderate that have helped him get reelected. [Politico]

ANA MARIE: Good morning!

MEGAN: It does appear to be morning, but I am not going to make any promises about its "goodness" until I, like you, have gotten some caffeine in my system. Also, please type less loudly. Oh, wait, that's me.

ANA MARIE: Fun Jezebel meet up, huh?

MEGAN: Yes, but I was driving so drinking was minimized and then I got home and was like, hey, glass before bed! And it was a big glass. A really, really big glass.

ANA MARIE: That'll do it. Whereas the highlight of my evening was A RAHM SIGHTING.

MEGAN: In tights?

ANA MARIE: Sadly no. But he was with one of his equally brilliant brother, ZEKE, who arrived in the restaurant still wearing his lanyard nametag. Very dorky-cute. They had just been at this.

MEGAN: Oh, man, a conventioneer?

ANA MARIE: A very important powerful conventioneer:

"When it gets rough out there, a lot of business leaders get out of the car and say, 'We're OK with minor reform.' I'm challenging you today, we're going to have to do big, serious things," Rahm Emanuel said, speaking to The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council, a conference convened to elicit corporate opinion on the challenges facing the new president.

MEGAN: Also, I love how a CEO's top concern is card check. Fucking U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Like, hello, new Great Depression but you care whether Obama will veto card check? Hint, hint, dickwad, he won't.

ANA MARIE: (WSJ reports on Rahm's presence, this is how I know Zeke was there. ) This threw me a bit:

"The American people in two successive elections have voted for change, and change cannot be allowed to die on the doorsteps of Washington," Mr. Emanuel said.

Until i remembered that he counts 2006 as an election.

MEGAN: Ooh, Zeke works at NIH? And 2006 was Rahm's big victory, of course he thinks about it that way! But can we talk about the softer side of Rahm? :

According to notes taken by leadership aides, Mr. Emanuel choked up when he told the colleagues his decision to leave the Hill and join the Obama administration was "not an easy decision for me."

ANA MARIE: Eh, just because someone has a filthy mouth doesn't mean the waterworks are broken. You and I should know!

MEGAN: I don't cry, I just have something in my contact lens. Even when I'm wearing my glasses.

ANA MARIE: So are you stone hearted or just not much of a crier? And I think that is a great segue to Hillary! Are you tired of talking about her yet? Will doing it again actually bring you to tears?

MEGAN: No, that is exactly how I deal with stuff when I "have something in my eye!" Segue! The whole situation in which she's saying she might not want it really makes me wonder what Clinton was doing jetting around in Air Fuck One.

ANA MARIE: The name says it all. Given all the rumors and speculation floating around, I think I trust Ambinder's take on the situation (Hillary's, not Bill's... or rather, not THAT Bill situation).

MEGAN: Okay, best line in the piece:

On the other hand, it is conceivable that President Obama would hand Sen. Clinton a ticket with the words "Middle East Peace" printed on it, and say: "Go," giving Clinton the flexibility and transitive authority to secure her place in history.

That would be nice.

ANA MARIE: On the other hand, there's this:

She would be Secretary of State in an administration dominated by other foreign policy heavyweights. She will wonder where Joe Biden fits in to all of this; the two senators are collegial and competitive. There is some angst with Joe Biden's circle of confidants about Clinton's serving as Secretary of State. It is not clear whether Biden himself shares the angst.

MEGAN: If Joe Biden wanted to be SecState, he should not have accepted the VP slot.

ANA MARIE: I suspect Biden thought that VP would be like SecStatePLUS.

MEGAN: Welcome to the Greater Depression, Joe Biden, when you get to have a domestic policy function. But if Ambinder is right and the whole thing is collegial and proceeding apace, why all the leaks that she's not gonna do it?

ANA MARIE: Because you can be collegial about vetting and still not be sure you're gonna do it. And we still don't know what the vetting has turned up.

MEGAN: Well, and that's what I meant about what was going on on Air Fuck One. Is it the 'stans? The investments? The foreign donors at the library?

ANA MARIE: Well if everyone is being all discreet as they say, we may never know — Hillary's ambivalence could be a cover for making a graceful exit after they find out that Bill was banging a Pakastani tranny. Or accepting money from a Pakastani warlord. Which is maybe more likely.

MEGAN: Yeah, because I think transvestites are more of an Afghani thing. I have listened to a lot of people talk about homosexuality in Afghanistan over the last year. I'm starting to think people want to do more than fuck OBL up (i.e., down, sideways, back and forth, etc.).

ANA MARIE: Everyone needs a hobby

MEGAN: Especially Ted Stevens now.

ANA MARIE: I understand he makes gigantic fish sculptures in his spare time. Presumably they will become truly gargantuan now. Do you continue to live in Alaska if you don't have to? That's my question.

MEGAN: Mike Gravel says: no. His wife says, aw hell no.

ANA MARIE: I'm not sure if Gravel is the best source on the subject of sane behavior.

MEGAN: Well, what politician from Alaska is?

ANA MARIE: I hope the new guy!

MEGAN: Good luck with that. Begich winning does mean that if they can pull it out in Minnesota (decent odds) and then Georgia (unlikely), the Dems will have their filibuster-proof majority if Lieberman doesn't shank them again. Which he will, 'cause he's Lieberman and now has no fear.

ANA MARIE: Yeah, that is what it means! And I think Lieberman is probably more of a pussy than you think.

MEGAN: I'm sure he's less of a pussy than Harry Reid, but that ain't saying much.

ANA MARIE: Harry Reid, the boxing pussy.

MEGAN: Some dudes do think pussy is a competitive sport.

ANA MARIE: And that boxing is as well. Did you see Bill Kristol is "ambivalent" about keeping his New York Times column?

MEGAN: Man, what a copycat. He sees Hillary playing the expectation-management game and then hops on board? Yeah, Bill, everyone knows you're going to be out on your ass when the contract's up, you should've been ambivalent in, like, January.

ANA MARIE: Or more ambivalent about Sarah Palin! His ambivalence is widely misplaced

MEGAN: A lot of things about Bill Kristol are misplaced. Like any rational thought.

ANA MARIE: In an interview with the New York Observer, he says he's actually only met Palin twice. Which could explain a lot!

MEGAN: Oh, right, like he couldn't have fallen in political love in two meetings? That hair, those eyes, her lips, those thighs and drill, baby, drill? He probably had stronger tingles in his leg for her than Chris Matthews did for Obama.

ANA MARIE: I'm sure Chris Matthews would disagree. Oh, and speaking of Chris Matthews: BEST SENATE RACE OF 2010. Unless, you know, Keith Olbermann takes his competitive streak to New Jersey

MEGAN: Oh, God, that will be so amazing. Has Specter even confirmed he's running yet? Could it be an open seat? Can I be THAT lucky?

ANA MARIE: I totally made up that KO thing, btw. Like, that isn't even a rumor, people. I want to spell that out because I think that it was just such a remark that might give us Sen. Franken.

MEGAN: Yeah, unless Olbermann decides to take on Corzine in the primary for the gubernatorial race, he can't run for Senate for a while yet. That said, can you imagine the smear campaign? The heart races.

ANA MARIE: Every campaign ad would be a SPECIAL COMMENT, with lots of chair spinning.

MEGAN: Hey, remember how al Qaeda endorsed McCain and all the conservatives were like, it's psychological warfare! They really are endorsing Obama? Well, no, it turns out, they really were into McCain. Oh, and Ayman al-Zawahri thinks Obama is a race traitor and a — I swear — "house negro." He's also pissed that Obama has "abandoned his Muslim faith."

ANA MARIE: al-Zawahri reads too many right wing blogs.