SPENCER: It is 8:11 a.m. and the dude sitting near me at the BWI airport 50s-kitsch diner counter just ordered a 20 oz Miller Lite
MEGAN: Well, at least is isn't a 40? I am sitting in the hallway outside of security watching the tourists parade on by and watching the security people wonder what I'm doing. The security lady says it's coldest in the hallway between the A and B gates, a truth to which I can currently attest.
SPENCER: Interesting fact about the difference between A & B gates: for the purpose of eating or using the bathroom, you're better off using B, even if your flight is at A. No bathrooms at A, and the only stuff to eat is like Arby's and such.
MEGAN: Ooh, I remember that but please don't remind me how much I need to pee after all that coffee I drank to be awake enough to drive you up here. So, I feel like we should lead off with the story about how when Jesse Jackson suggested castrating Barack Obama, he also dropped the n-word, in reference to, well, pretty much every African-American person in America.
SPENCER: Also I bought an issue of Wired for the first time ever — I had a girlfriend who subscribed and my lack of interest in the magazine was a minor issue between us — because Julia Allison is on the cover and I still do not exactly know who she is, but she has extremely impressive cleavage.
MEGAN: Really? If you wanted a picture of impressive cleavage, you didn't have to pay for it.
SPENCER: Ah yes. You know who's upset that she doesn't get to use the N Word? Internment-camp apologist Michelle Malkin. Yes you have very impressive tits and I would never say otherwise.
MEGAN: I prefer that such knowledge be widespread, I will admit it. Also, how much does Michelle Malkin really suck, truly?
SPENCER: Hahahaha the waitress just brought me the Miller Lite by mistake
MEGAN: Dude, the man bought you a beer, it's only polite to accept.
SPENCER: I suppose with my Blackwater t-shirt and tattoos I look like the sort of air traveller who'd have a beer with his omelet
MEGAN: I can't believe that you're getting hit on by dudes this morning and I am not, I need to step up my game.
SPENCER: What is it with right-wingers and their desire to say the n-word? Like, what's in it for you?
MEGAN: Spencer, I mean, obviously, it's not faaaaaair that black people get to use the "n" word and get to be all offended about it when other people do. It's, like, practically anti-American. It's hating on our freedoms (to be racist, disgusting sonsofbitches).
SPENCER: Life is unfair to Michelle Malkin but I feel it is so for reasons independent of her inability to type the N-word.
MEGAN: I don't think like is unfair to MM. I think she is probably pretty damn content with her life. If we want to talk unfair lives, we'd talk about my life. Or yours.
SPENCER: So what are we supposed to believe follows from the apparent fact that Jesse Jackson used the N-word? The significance is...? My life is pretty great right now: I'm about to fly to Austin to attend and speak at a conference of the anti-American terrorist supporting left. i shaved my mustache down and grew out my beard so i could look like a Salafist.
MEGAN: Well, I think it's the hypocrisy of him being part of the campaign to get rappers and the like to stop using it.
I did notice your beard was longer, but I don't notice when the 'stache is shorter, I'll admit.
SPENCER: Oh that was Jackson? Should I blame him for the fact that Nas' record is called Untitled and not N Word? I feel like this is the sort of thing that only a non-black person could possibly find hypocritical
MEGAN: Yes, he was one of the anti-n-word campaign which, frankly, I'm not completely opposed to as I cringe when I hear someone say the word regardless of race, but it is the height of hypocrisy to moralize about it publicly and then use it privately. And/or to threaten to cut off the balls of the first black candidate for President when he suggests that some black men should take responsibility for their children when you've knocked up your mistress.
SPENCER: Like, I don't agree with this argument, but there's nothing a priori hypocritical about saying the n-word but not wanting prominent black figures to use it as the titles of their books or albums or movies or what-have-you. I don't think it's hypocritical! oftentimes I say things in unguarded moments that it's better not see print/publication/distribution. that's an issue of judgment, not hypocrisy. as Dave Chappelle taught us, a world in which everyone constantly keeps us real is not one we'd actually like to live in.
MEGAN: Well, I think that if you're going to argue for a word to be banned from use, then it shouldn't be a word that you're wont to drop yourself. Also, I'm mostly just disappointed in Jesse Jackson the way I am in Geraldine Ferraro, because I thought he was so awesome when I was a little kid and now he's just another big jerk. Plus, whenever I hear Rainbow Coalition, I think Rainbow Connection and now I feel like he has besmirched Kermit.
SPENCER: Have you ever listened to his "I Am Somebody" speech? It's beyond awesome. liberals should remember their history — we tend to think of the 80s as a wasteland of Reaganesque triumphalism but there were some real high points, and Rev JJ's 1984 convention speech is one of them
MEGAN: No, I completely agree. 1984 is really the first election I remember (him and Geraldine being little girl highlights of mine) and so that's really the source of my disappointment.
SPENCER: Jesus fucking CHRIST the Miller Liters are shouting out "Strong Island" to some women who sensibly left the diner-counter in a hurry. ok now i need you to explain something to me
MEGAN: Oh, God, I'm glad I'm not with you right now.
SPENCER: On our internal FDL email listserv, my blogospheric colleagues noted that there was a near-riot at an IndyMac branch in California. I have no idea why or what happened, nor what IndyMac, like, is, so I'm counting on you to explain.
MEGAN: Um, so, I take that back, a woman just sat down next to me out here and started clipping her toenails.
SPENCER: Done with breakfast now!
MEGAN: Ok, so, IndyMac: was a bank in California, still sort of is. The Feds moved in last Friday after it was determined that they didn't have enough money to meet their depository obligations because of tighter credit and foreclosures. Though, it might be eventually facing fraud charges.
SPENCER: and this is Housing-Crisis-related?
MEGAN: Yes, mostly. I mean, housing crisis and financial mismanagement, which are basically being seen as one and the same these days. But, so, like, if you didn't know, any savings accounts and CDs and the like are insured by the federal government up to — and only up to — $100,000.
SPENCER: I did not know
MEGAN: And the FDIC has determined that up to 10,000 IndyMac customers have deposits in excess of the FDIC limits, which is like up to $1 billion in uninsured deposits, and the FDIC expects to have to pay $8 billion + for the bail out. But those people with more money in than the FDIC insured, those people will basically be considered the bank's creditors and will wait years or more to get their money back (if they ever get their $$ back), which is why people were freaking the fuck out yesterday
SPENCER: Okay, I think I found the incident in question — it appears to have occurred in the San Fernando Valley:

Police ordered angry customers lined up outside an IndyMac Bank branch to remain calm or face arrest Tuesday as they tried to pull their money on the second day of the failed institution's federal takeover.
At least three police squad cars showed up early Tuesday as tensions rose outside the San Fernando Valley branch of Pasadena-based IndyMac.

So this is a riot of the formerly-rich?
MEGAN: Welcome to the Depression, and why the government started the FDIC in the first place, though it does provide a significant financial disincentive for banks to not do a great job self-regulating. Well, "formerly rich"
SPENCER: or is it only bloggers who don't have $100,000-plus in the bank these days?
MEGAN: I mean, some of these people, that might be their retirement savings because when you get within 5-10 of retirement you're told to take your money out of the stock market and put it in insurable, risk-averse assets.
SPENCER: Whoa you used the D-word
MEGAN: Ben B can come by and flog me later.
SPENCER: I am sure when I arrive at Netroots Nation there will be no shortage of invective on this, and i don't mean that pejoratively. Oh hey could I refer back to yesterday's CH for a second?
MEGAN: Which part? I know not the food parts...
SPENCER: The Iraq/Afghanistan parts
MEGAN: Sure
SPENCER: My friend Elle Reeve — someone else that TNR fucked over — read yesterday's CH rather attentively, as her husband Scott, a rather unfortunately infamous Iraq veteran, is scheduled to return for his second Iraq tour in the fall and she grounded yesterday's discussion of the Obama/McCain debate over Afghanistan/Iraq troop levels in a really compelling way, so I hereby introduce CH readers to the awesome Elle Reeve:

Obama wants to send two brigades to Afghanistan, and now McCain wants to send three. Where would these dudes come from? They're not going to pluck guys from one war zone and deposit them in another, right? So will troops scheduled for Iraq get sent to Afghanistan instead, and the guys in Iraq won't be replaced as their deployments expire? If Obama's elected and starts pulling out, wouldn't guys in Iraq have shortened deployments, while the guys in Afghanistan would still be deployed for 15 months at a time?

MEGAN: Oh, geez, that sucks that he got re-upped.
SPENCER:

Scott's brigade is mechanized, so there's little chance he'd be sent to Afghanistan, since tanks and Bradleys don't work well with mountains, right? The brigade is set to be in Iraq through near the last of Obama's 16 months. So what will happen to last of the guys in Iraq? Will they pull out of less volatile areas first? Because his co-workers totally deserve someplace nice in Kurdistan after serving in Baghdad last year. Basically, I'm looking to seize on any possibility that he'll be in a marginally less dangerous area. Or an area I can sneak in to. Kidding! Sort of. Give me the illusion of control.

Given that I need to board a plane in like 10 minutes, I sympathize deeply with Elle's desire for the illusion of control
MEGAN: I mean, who doesn't? I always prefer to have the illusion that I have any control over anything. And have a kickass time in Austin!

MEGAN: So, here we are again, Crappy-ing without Moe who is on vacation because you and me are suckers, possibly. I've heard vacations are nice, though. Through the grapevine.
SPENCER: speaking of vacations, i need to put out an open call to the Jezebels who live in Austin
on Saturday 5/17 i'll be there to see the reunion show of classic 90s Chicago punk band Los Crudos
and i have nowhere to stay and no one to hang out with now that my travel partner has abandoned me for such frivolities as "finding a place to live"
so if any of you guys live in austin and can put up with a respectful houseguest for like a day, holler at sackerman-at-washingtonindependent-dot-com
ok what is in the news
MEGAN: Oh, that sucks about having nowhere to stay! I'd offer up someone but the only person I for sure know in Texas is in Dallas and it's this douchebag lobbyist I used to date and I wouldn't subject anyone to his company. And if you were a girl, he'd mack on you something awful.
SPENCER: so, HRC not dropping out despite our awesome reconciliation-filled comment thread yesterday?
MEGAN: Nope, not in the slightest. She's in it to win it, even if she cannot, mathematically speaking, win it. I am counting down the minutes until she mentions again that "pledged" delegates are not actually obligated to vote for whom they were elected to vote for...
SPENCER: this baffles me
how the press treats her candidacy like it's still viable, even as they're pointing that out
MEGAN: Well, she is a candidate. And she could win if she did manage to convince like 80% of the supers to support her and continued to get at least decent margins in the primaries. It's just unlikely to happen.
Very, very, very unlikely.
SPENCER: i was watching the detroit-orlando last night and was thinking about what would happen if sportscasters started saying things like, "orlando is up by over 20 with 30 seconds left in the fourth, but detroit could still pull it out in the unlikely event of overtime"
MEGAN: Actually, that might make it worth it to me to watch a basketball game. I fucking hate sports commentary, but if it was actually Dadaist in its absurdity...
SPENCER: ok and so not to pick on HRC, because yesterday's CH comments were a beautiful miracle, but the longer this goes on the more it makes her say things like this:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

a strong prima facie case can be made that Ajmi didn't "return" to the battlefield. The experience of being hooded and goggled and flown half a world away in the belly of a C-130; of being caged under the hot sun in the chain-link-and-wood sarcophagus of Camp X-Ray and then the panopticon of Camp Delta — and I have seen it with my own eyes; of being always at the mercy of the Quick Reaction Force and the Joint Detentions Operations Group and the interrogators; and never having a clear and open and fair path to argue for your freedom for years — that is the sort of thing that makes a man plot revenge. To deny that is to deny human nature.

I'm not saying Ajmi was an innocent. I'm not saying Guantanamo gave him a license to murder. And I'm certainly not saying that his victims deserved to die because he spent three years in Guantanamo.

What I'm saying is that a completely forseeable consequence of Guantanamo Bay is the creation of terrorists.

MEGAN: So, do you love how you're the official go-to CH sub now? We keep thinking we ought to get a girl or something, but you're too easy.
SPENCER: it's true
you just pass me around
MEGAN: Does that make us really intellectually whore-y? Or just you?
SPENCER: wtf? i thought jezebel was against slut-shaming!
i'm gathering up my clothes and running out of this sorority house
my mascara all fucked up
i'm seeking the safe space of feministing
MEGAN:: Hey, you know, we all only fuck with other people about stuff we do ourselves and feel guilty about.
But I want my mascara back, even if it isn't waterproof.
Anyway, so, we could talk about everyone fucking on the campaign trail.
SPENCER: speaking of Feministing, can you believe that the New Yorker quoted a post Ann wrote and changed her name to "One Blogger"?
oh you want to talk to that about the NEWS
MEGAN: Oh, well, you know, it is supposed to sort of be like that. But, yeah, let's shame the New Yorker because that was a shit move.
(Says the girl who got quoted by them but not by name once already.)
SPENCER: yeah, what's next? the New Yorker hiring a snitch bitch as its Washington correspondent?
ok so: that WSJ story
MEGAN: Yeah, I just liked the story because it made us political DC types look like we actually manage to connect with one another on a human/physical level.
SPENCER: you didn't think it was ridiculous? do people not figure out that campaigns are staffed by 20-somethings, who work in a pressure cooker, for months on end, with limited contact with the outside world, and trained to think that anyone they don't work with is the enemy... and that in that environment... PEOPLE HAVE SEX WITH EACH OTHER
MEGAN: Yeah, I mean, I think you and I know that but most people see Howard Wolfson on TV in that motherfucking Norwegian sweater and think we're all nerdy and never get laid.
SPENCER: this, however, is inappropriate:

Sandra Sobieraj, Washington bureau chief for People magazine, married Frank Westfall, a Secret Service bomb technician who protected the vice president while she was covering the Gore campaign.

• What exactly are the people over at Style.com smoking? The new online accessories report looks totally trippy, and some of Candy Pratts Price's selections (like the Christian Lacroix & Givenchy boots and Manolo Blahnik heels) can only be explained by years of acid use [Style.com]
• Retail experts say that Austin, Texas "is maturing" well on its way to becoming yet another boring outpost for the rich and materialistic: Retailers like Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Juicy Couture and Lilly Pulitzer are descending upon the Lone Star city. [WWD]
• Jay-Z's sale of Rocawear to Iconix for $204 million is finalized. [WWD]
• Cindy Crawford goes back to modeling clothes. The Malibu-resident will be the face of New York & Company this summer. [WWD]
• A mactress named Alice Taglioni is Karl Lagerfeld's new darling. [PageSix]