The clip above has been featured on The O'Reilly Factor, and on Glenn Beck's radio show, making Jackie a minor conservative heroine. One YouTube poster asks, "Can't the young girl just get her book signed without being interrogated by MSNBC?" and Jackie herself apparently thinks Ms. O'Donnell's questions about Sarah Palin's support for the bailout were unfair. Here's how she frames the encounter on the blog Red, White & Conservative:

I noticed [O'Donnell] look down at my shirt then, she turned around blackberry in hand spoke to a man, thumbs tapping the blackberry (I don't remember if she called or not, she may have. But she was on her blackberry), then jotted down a quick note. Little did I know that note would be used against me. She told us she'd be walking up to us. You know like she just stumbled upon us. The shot began… I kept telling myself answer her question well, don't freak out. Well, I thought she'd ask me the same question. She asked the man beside me (who by the way is NOT my dad) the same question she had before we went on air. Myself on the other hand, not the same story. She had me read my shirt and then proceeded to ask me "Did you know Sarah Palin supported the bailout" to be 100% honest I was like, are you kidding me? She is trying to use my shirt against me. I was so shocked by the craftiness she had that I was truly stumped. I asked her where she got her fact and she read her little note.

So was O'Donnell's Blackberry-tapping "craftiness," or just responsible fact-checking prior to asking a question? Several commenters on Red, White & Conservative call the question about the bailout an "ambush," but is it really so underhanded for a journalist to be prepared with information? O'Donnell doesn't really "interrogate" Jackie or go out of her way to humiliate her — she moves on relatively quickly to her next question — and while perhaps a teenager wasn't the most ideal person to talk to, Jackie's t-shirt did indicate some familiarity with issues. Jackie's reaction and those of her supporters mirror the anti-liberal-media attacks of Carrie Prejean and Sarah Palin, and echo the increasingly common conservative claim that the media is doing something immoral whenever someone on the right looks bad. Jackie writes,

In one day I met a role model, and met the liberal media and their crafty schemes. I fell prey to liberal bias, but I'd like to think I did an okay job. [...] But unlike Norah I didnt have my note cards with me. I was forced to think on the spot and answer a gotcha question. Her goal was clear, make this teenager look like an uneducated Palin supporting buffoon. To liberals, and the 5 people who watch MSNBC she succeeded. To conservatives, she was the only buffoon during that interview.

Maybe Palin fans think O'Donnell comes off like a buffoon for asking a teenager a legitimate question. But what's clear from Jackie's experience is that to some conservatives, a "gotcha" question is just one you don't have the answer to.

Palin Fan Responds To O'Donnell Interview [Politico]
The Day I Met Sarah Palin…And The Liberal Media [Red, White & Conservative]
Norah O'Donnell Grills A Young Girl For Her Support Of Sarah Palin [YouTube]

• Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy took time out from fixing the nation's health care system and recovering from brain cancer to throw out the first pitch of the season at Fenway Park yesterday. [Politico]

• Former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens' conviction was officially thrown out yesterday, too. The prosecutors are under investigation for misconduct. [Washington Post]
• Arlen Specter threw it out there that he likes Rush Limbaugh, has never, ever smoked pot and would really like to stay on as the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania. [ThinkProgress]
• The Congressional Oversight Panel thinks we should throw out the bailout plan, fire the bank managers and liquidate the banks that are failing despite all our financial assistance (AIG, they're looking at you!). [Bloomberg]
• GM is taking their advice in advance and planning a bankruptcy filing. [Reuters]
• The state of Hawai'i would like Obama to let bailed out execs travel to Hawai'i on the company government dime because tourism is down. Talk to the airlines, Hawai'i, it's not the hotel expenses I can't afford. [LA Times]
• Congress members Barbara Lee, Laura Richardson and Bobby Rush — himself last seen accusing everyone of "lynching" now-Senator Roland Burris by suspecting some shady goings-on with his appointment — met with Fidel Castro and his wife this week. New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez is gonna be pissed. [NY Times]
• Al Franken is still totally the winner of the Minnesota Senate race and Norm Coleman is still a fucking poor loser. [Wall Street Journal]
• The fundies' new talking point is that the only reason states are legalizing same sex marriage is because gay people are all really rich. First, off, fuck them and their class warfare. Second off: if this is true, I hereby firmly commit myself to lesbianism and would like my monocle now, thanks. [ThinkProgress]

• Barack Obama responded to Dick Cheney's criticism that Obama would cause the next terrorist attack by saying that, in fact, it was going to be Cheney's fault. [Politico]

• Obama also thinks we probably need an exit strategy from Afghanistan. What, we're not going to try a permanent occupation of it? [BBC]
• If you're worried that lobbyists are going to have too much influence as to how the stimulus money gets spent, don't. In the new Obama Administration, they're going to tell you exactly how much influence lobbyists are having. That's change. [Washington Post]
• Also, get your populist rage hats on now, as some foreign companies that have operations in the U.S. may get stimulus funds to hire Americans and then may make money! Foreigners! I mean, unless you're one of the 5.3 million Americans employed by foreign companies in the U.S., then you won't need your pitchfork. [Washington Post]
• Former Commerce Secretary nominee and Dick In Chief Judd Gregg says Obama's budget — not the bailout or the stimulus — will bankrupt the country and Johnny Mac agrees. [AP, Salon]
• Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's got a brand new plan to convince hedge funds to buy toxic assets that no one wants. Someone should tell him that Bernie Madoff ruined Ponzi schemes for at least a year. [BBC]
• Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded to Obama's overtures by farting in his general direction. [Huffington Post]
• Senator from Maine Olympia Snowe thinks some Dems need to sack up and and tell the Administration no sometimes. She's mostly missed, like Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, that Chris Dodd took out her bonus limitations at Geithner's request. [Huffington Post]

Barack Obama has finally found a way to keep down the ever-increasing costs of the stimulus and bail-out bill: he's decided that any bank that takes significant bail-out money from now on will have to agree to salary caps for top executives. I mean, it'll be hard for these guys to buy new planes or the naming rights for stadiums, pay themselves millions in bonuses or redecorate their offices with carpets that cost nearly twice the median household income in America ($47,000, by the way) without the government giving them the money to do so, but that's what they have layoffs for, so it's cool! Joking aside, although even Donald Trump thinks that salary caps are cool, it doesn't mean that Obama isn't losing the stimulus messaging war in which Republicans bitch and moan about $300 million in contraception funding while sticking in $19 billion for anyone wealthy enough to buy a house this year and defunding health care provisions for the almost-retired and unemployed. Nominate one to, say, run the Commerce Department — where economic stimulus is job 1 — and they still won't vote for the damn bill. But, hey, maybe if you nominate one to replace Tom Daschle at HHS, then they will.

Anyway, in totally important news, Sarah Palin is mad at Ashley Judd for "misrepresenting" aerial wolf-hunting, but she's not mad that Bill Clinton called her to sympathize over the fake stories that she didn't give birth to Trig. In other news of people who could really shut the fuck up now, Dick Cheney says the tur'rists are comin'; Democratic House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel says he didn't really mean to cheat on his taxes or fudge his required financial disclosures; Republicans are blocking Hilda Solis' confirmation hearing and eventual confirmation because over unions' agitating for unionizing. Oh, and Joe the Motherfucking Plumber isn't sure that we deserve his political wisdom more than his son deserves daddy time, so on behalf of all undeserving Americans, Joe, shut the fuck up.

• 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]

• Officials are confirming that Hillary Clinton met with Barack Obama in Chicago to talk about a potential Cabinet slot. Two "senior Democratic officials" confirmed to the Huffington Post that Clinton was offered Secretary of State and asked for time to consider it, but she didn't admit to anything at a press conference in Albany. [NY Times, Huffington Post]
• Barack Obama and John McCain are going to meet this weekend to talk about how they might be able to work together on something once Obama is President. It was arranged by Senator Lindsay Graham, McCain's Number One Fanboy. [Washington Post]
• Vermont Senator Pat Leahy became the one who broke the seal, announcing today that he's not going to support Connecticut Senator Joe "Turncoat" Lieberman's efforts to hold onto his committee chairmanship in the Democratic-controlled Senate since Lieberman isn't a Democrat, campaigned against the incoming Democratic President and endorsed a Republican. Glad someone has more of a spine than Harry Reid. [Washington Post]
• Speaking of backbones, thousands of people are expecting to protest the passage of Proposition 8 tomorrow, in California and around the country. [Huffington Post]

• Other things coming to Washington include: Barack Obama's favorite pizza in Chicago, which is not Chicago-style but is, I guarantee, better than all but about 5 pizza outlets in the D.C. Metro area. [Huffington Post]
• FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair (a contender for the Treasury Secretary slot in an Obama Administration, if the rumors are true) unveiled her $25 million plan to stop 1.5 million foreclosures next year by offering incentives to financial institutions to reduce homeowners' monthly payments. Current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson reportedly hates the idea, preferring to spend the money buying stock in banks and encouraging addition lending, let alone that he doesn't want to have to cede 3.5 percent of his Congressional spending authority to a girl to, like, help struggling Real Americans instead of banks. [Washington Post]
• California Congressman Dan Lungen is planning on challenging Ohio Congressman John Boehner for House Minority Leader. I wonder if he knows the perma-tan isn't one of the perks? [CNN]
• Former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele wants to take over the Republican National Committee. He faces a mass of other people that didn't have prime time speaking roles at the Republican National Convention. [Politico]
• McCain campaign manager Rick Davis took responsibility for not paying how much attention "a gal from New York" they hired to shop for Sarah Palin spent on her wardrobe since they didn't give her a budget or look at the bills. That only took until after your guy lost, dickwad. Nice timing. [CNN]
• Outgoing corrupt Republican Congressman Rick Renzi of Arizona (who will be replaced by Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick) will face racketeering and other new charges when he eventually goes to trial on being a corrupt bastard. [Huffington Post]
• Renzi's colleague-in-corruption Alaska Senator Ted Stevens has fallen behind in his bid to win re-election to the Senate seat he'd be forced from once he had to report to the clink. [LA Times]
• Joe The Motherfucking Plumber has a motherfucking book deal. I, on the other hand, do not. I can ask stupid questions! I swear! Call me, publishers? [Huffington Post]

• McCain suggested he might suspend his campaign again so that he can really broker a bailout plan to save the country and be a hero... and we all know how well that worked out the last time. [The Nation]
• An actuarial company has predicted that McCain has a 25 percent chance of dying in office his second term, which is why Sarah Palin is cracking jokes about Joe Biden's age and asked people whether they want "the new energy, the new face, the new ideas" in the White House in her new interview with Katie Couric. [MSNBC, Politico]
• By the way, despite the fact that Republican leaders initially claimed it was Pelosi's partisan speech that caused Republicans to vote against the bailout plan — a stance mocked by no less than Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann and Rush Limbaugh — it turns out that it was actually Newt Gingrich's fault! He ginned up opposition to the bill to test the waters for a 2012 Presidential run before releasing a tepid statement of support while the Members he conned voted his will in the floor. Dick. [Huffington Post, Huffington Post, Politico, Huffington Post]
• The Republican strategy to win in Ohio — as in Michigan before that — remains to disenfranchise new, poor and minority voters. For real. It's easier than winning based on your candidate or the issues, apparently. [MSNBC, Michigan Messenger]

• Palin's former aides admit that she's a little ADD about debate prep but usually pulls it out in the end because she's all charming and shit. [LA Times, Andrew Sullivan]
• Palin gave her first newspaper interview — via e-mail, naturally — and managed not to stick her foot in it. Her staff managed to do little more than reiterate talking points in e-mail format, but it's a start. [Mat-Su Frontiersman]
• Gwen Ifill broke her ankle this week (Steve Schmidt has nothing to do with it, he swears) but neither rain nor snow nor dark of night will keep her from asking Sarah Palin about foreign policy. [Fishbowl LA]
• Bill Clinton plans to suck it up and do a couple of Obama rallies in Florida so people will stop saying he's bitter and not really keen on an Obama presidency. Now if only he can keep the passive-aggressive slights to himself while doing them! [The Guardian]

MEGAN: Good morning, sunshine! Ready for another day of this?

KAY: You know it.

MEGAN: Well, first let us discuss the definitive proof that Olbermann is not in the bag for Obama: he named him the 3rd worst person in the world yesterday for forgetting how long he'd been married to Michelle. I'm going to guess he'd better have come home with more than a box of Russell Stovers.

KAY: Actually, I'm usually the one that forgets birthdays and anniversaries, so it makes me feel better that Obama does too. (See that Sarah Palin? Obama can get in touch with Real America, too.) Of course, Obama probably has a few more things on his mind than I do.

MEGAN: I'll admit, I suck at birthdays. Ask anyone. If my phone doesn't go off to remind me that there is a birthday, then I'm up shit creek. On the other hand, he remembered the anniversary, just not how long they'd been married. Anyway, I mostly just thought it was funny, being as it was coupled with Hannity trying to spin Dick Morris that McCain won last Friday and Karl Rove insisting that Palin was "over prepared" for her interview — given that one of the two gaffes that CBS is not airing is her sitting in utter silence when asked to name a Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade. You'd think little Ms. Second Amendment could pull Heller out of her ass, let alone Hamden since her running mate crapped on the Supreme Court for that one despite his supposed anti-torture stand. Hey, how about Brown v. Board of Education? Plessy v. Ferguson? Griswold? Bueller?

KAY: Yeah, I think my favorite part of that was this quote:

There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.

Don't worry, though, she's pretty much requested a do over with Katie Couric.

MEGAN: OMG, did you see it last night?

It was terrible! Terrible! Like, it was like she brought her dad with her to the principal's office and when the questioning got too tough, she let him defend her in a complete bullshit way. My parents were dumbstruck at her stupidity. At one point my mom — who, notably, is not political — said "Why won't he let her talk?" And my dad just sat there and shook his head in awe at the spectacle.

KAY: I know. No wonder the McCain campaign kept her under wraps for so long. I mean, Biden is known for gaffes too, so maybe tomorrow night will be a gaffe-off.

MEGAN: Well, I think before then we'll see plenty of opportunities for the McCain camp to roll out their new talking points, which is that this is all "gotcha" journalism, so that they can attack Gwen Ifill for the questions she asks and the commentators fact-checking at the end and try to mitigate the disaster for Palin they obviously expect it to be. Obama's camp isn't going around trying to convince anyone that The Big Bad Media is out to get Biden.

KAY: So true. The McCain camp is doing some mad lowering expectations lately. I do like, though, how Biden's strategy for Thursday is to pretty much let her screw up on her own and not call attention to it. Because you know Big Bad Media will have that taken care of. Maybe "gotcha" journalism wouldn't be a factor here if there weren't any mistakes to catch.

MEGAN: Ha! Like that's even possible for there not to be mistakes to catch? I was catching some just listening last week, so it's not hard. It just apparently takes The Big Bad Media 4 days to do the same if it's something complex and important like taxes. That said, I actually don't think that the McCain camp is trying to lower expectations because can people's expectations of Sarah Palin get any lower really? What they're attempting to do is redefine the outlines of the game, to make any mention of her gaffes off-limits, to make questioning her on foreign policy off-limits. They're trying to use public pressure to reign in the supposedly free press so that she can do whatever and they won't fact check or call her on it out of some kind of fear. That's sort of the brilliance, from the media's perspective, of having Katie Couric and Gwen Ifill be the meanies, because at least then the McCain camp can't call sexism.

KAY: So true. Although I've definitely met some pretty sexist women in my day. But the weird thing is that Couric is not known for being an unusually tough interviewer. Quite the opposite, in fact, and that's why so many people thought her transition to evening news was so weird. But in the end, it was her, not the media stalwarts, who came across looking tougher.

MEGAN: Well, I don't know that she came across looking tougher, because when ever she got tough, she always cocked her head, slowed down and spoke in an extremely sensitive tone of voice as she was grilling Palin. She only actually seemed annoyed when McCain accused her of gotcha journalism. It was very Barbara Walters of her.

KAY: So does this mean Couric will get a spot on The View later?

• That compromise bailout plan intended to save the economy? Yeah, it failed. [Washington Post]
• The Dow proceeded to drop 778 points, the largest one-day loss in nearly 2 decades. Many people just kissed their asses and life savings goodbye. [Washington Post]
• Republicans blame Nancy Pelosi for giving an offensive speech before the vote, which included partisan remarks like recognizing that Bush inherited surpluses and now the economy sucks. [Politico, Swampland]
• Barney Frank responded to those criticisms thusly: "Because somebody hurt their feelings, they decide to punish the country." Fucking crybabies. [Huffington Post]

• McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin blamed Democrats for preventing his boss from saving this great nation. Even my mom rolled her eyes at that shit. [Talking Points Memo]
• Others think that if McCain was so willing to take credit for the bailout yesterday, he should grow a pair and take credit for the failure today. My mom wiped tears from her eyes when she was done laughing at that one. [Marc Ambinder]
• Sarah Palin is looking forward to winning the debate because Joe Biden rooted for his home state football team, thus continuing her streak of WTF comments. [NY Times]
• The new Sarah Palin interview clips that will be on today and tomorrow on CBS are from Palin's second, brand-new interview with Katie Couric. Apparently, the fun can continue. [LA Times]

• John McCain will be debating after all tonight in Mississippi, and I'll be live-blogging it at 9:00 ET to help you get through it. [Washington Post]
• As the ad indicates, McCain started declaring victory in the debate right about the same time he decided to attend it. Talk about lowered expectations. [CNN]
• Everyone from his former adviser Craig Shirley to his former opponent Mike Huckabee thinks McCain fucked this up. Ya think? [Huffington Post, CNN]
• Aides to Sarah Palin are defying subpoenas issued in response to the troopergate probe of the Alaska governor; seven of them simply didn't appear in court today. Is anyone surprised?

• House Republicans have decided to try this "negotiations" thing on the bailout plan they keep hearing about. Oh, goodie. [Washington Post]
• Those would be the same House Republicans who proposed their bailout plan yesterday that McCain backed in his now-infamous White House meeting. Aides admit McCain had no idea what the fuck the plan was about, big surprise. [Think Progress]
• Economists agree that said plan is fucking stupid. [Politico]
• If McCain hadn't had his head up is ass and no idea what he was doing, he could've noticed that the public wasn't keen on the plan that was out there and made some political hay out of that. Luckily for Obama, McCain finds it really cozy up there in his lower colon, even if it does smell a little funky. [LA Times]
• Democrats are calling McCain "erratic," as though being terminally stupid is somehow different for him. [Politico]

MEGAN: So, the following things should not be mixed: champagne, mai tais, rum & cokes, random shots, tequila and whatever else I drank last night. I was so dehydrated when I woke up this morning that it was hard to brush my teeth.

SPENCER: (Autoreply) only if you're Megan

Hahahaha my away message actually gains a new context thanks to what you just wrote. I was in bed by 10:30 and feel fantastic!

MEGAN: Are we deliberately alternating hangovers? Should we?

SPENCER: That's an interesting experiment. Kind of like a cap and trade system? The objective is to limit the world's aggregate hangovers by creating a market for them. Yet, as we all know, markets fail, and fail epically.

MEGAN: Yes, I believe WaMu shareholders are finding that out.

SPENCER: And their failure can yield political failure that also attains epic proportions, yielding spectacles like this:

In the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”
Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know.”

Holy shit! You wonder if Paulson started singing Boyz II Men.

MEGAN: That would've been kind of awesome, though I think the person Paulson needs to ass-kiss is John Boehner, whose name is technically pronounced BAY-ner but after fucking up the bailout at John McCain's request yesterday, I think we can just pronounce it how it looks.

SPENCER: You know what's perfect about Boehner? He has an aide named Kevin Smith. As in the Kevin Smith who fucks up everything he touches and cheapens our love for such beautiful things as comic books and the New Jersey Turnpike. And I'm unconvinced Boehner/McCain's gambit will work.

MEGAN: Dude, I think it makes John McCain look like his whole purpose in coming back here was to fuck this up. Other people agree.

SPENCER: No no no I totally get that. The scenario would be like Obama starts to hold his non-debate town hall in Mississippi, it gets five minutes in and then all the networks cut away to a McCain presser in Washington where he announces that his tireless work has yielded a deal. Right? But it's only actually a deal if the Democrats go along with it, and after yesterday's acrimony, they're not going to assist McCain in torpedoing their candidate. Well, maybe Hillary.

MEGAN: Well, Hillary's totally not involved in it. And, yeah, I mean, McCain's backing the Boehner plan which is to provide tax breaks to companies that buy up bad debt and provide government insurance for it all because, as WaMu and IndyMac proved, insuring bad debt doesn't cost taxpayers any money whatsoever!

SPENCER: So the Democrats get to be on the right side substantively and politically, and McCain reinforces the narrative of his unforced error. How is this bad for Obama? I remember how yesterday's liberal conventional wisdom was how McCain was setting himself up to vote against the bailout!

MEGAN: Only if Chuck Todd is right and no one televises the Obama debate.

SPENCER: That's where I have no insight. What else are the networks going to broadcast?

MEGAN: Let's hope not reruns, because I don't have cable up here.

SPENCER: It costs money for them to have to upend their scheduling for a re-done presidential debate, I imagine that they're going to just give Obama the time since at least some fraction of the audience will tune in anyway. JUST LIKE THE LIBERAL SHILLS THEY ARE. Clearly McCain has his cock in the pooch's ass here.

MEGAN: Yeah, I also love how he's all like well, if Obama had just agreed to my town hall meetings then the debates wouldn't be necessary or important. He's never going to fucking let that go, and no one gives a shit. That was a blatant political move as much as coming back to DC to "save" the bailout plan.

SPENCER: The people I feel bad for are, like, Tucker Bounds. He needed McCain to win, just really really needed it, because no one else is going to hire a flack who ruined his own credibility. I was in the Austin gymnasium where Ari Fleischer told a goggle-eyed press corps that "Palm Beach County is a Pat Buchanan stronghold" and if Bush hadn't pulled that shit out, Ari would never have been able to get another job here at all. Well, maybe that's wrong, because there's the whole spirit of "he had to lie for his boss" in DC, but still, you see what I'm getting at.

MEGAN: The problem is that Tucker Bounds is bad at it, not that he's a liar. But, yes, if McCain loses, he'll be in trouble job-wise because of his basic incompetence.

SPENCER: And Tucker Bounds' people. Basically the whole McCain communications shop. The Weekly Standard can't hire all of them. Some will have to get jobs doing things like sucking GOP staffers off in the Union Station men's room. This economy, it's tough.

MEGAN: As though GOP staffers have to pay other staffers to suck them off in the men's rooms of Union Station. Only Lindsay Graham has to do that.

SPENCER: Hey, that's never been proven.

MEGAN: That's the kind of discretion that Lindsay Graham is paying for!

SPENCER: You know what sucks about DC? If there's no debate tonight, I don't know what my plans are. I'm supposed to have people over to watch the fucking thing.

MEGAN: I'm supposed to be live-blogging the stupid thing after my sister's rehearsal dinner, so tell me about it.

SPENCER: You, you're going to a wedding, with your family, you're set, there's nothing excruciating about that. I'm at the mercy of twitter-whims.

MEGAN: You and your sarcasm.

SPENCER: Jesus FUCK there's a bunch of construction workers in my office knocking out a wall. I wish someone would have told me not to come in today.

MEGAN: Oh, if you didn't know, we do know how Treasury arrived at the $700 billion figure.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

And that's not even why John McCain wants to scuttle the motherfucking thing.

SPENCER: Now that's how the professionals do it! I read that and just think, what these people need is $700 billion without strings attached.

MEGAN: Hey, what Republican doesn't want that?

SPENCER: So there was this event last night where my friends Ezra and Yglz held forth on where progressivism is at these days, and Ezra said something that's haunted me all night. It's probably totally obvious to anyone who isn't an economic illiterate: Liberals are about to (PROBABLY HOPEHOPEHOPEAUDACITYHOPE) take power, on the headwinds of promises to restore a sensible balance between government and the market. There will be expectations, naturally, of doing... stuff. You know, delivering on promises about health care and education and the sort of robust safety net that distinguishes liberalism from its alternatives. But there's no money for that stuff anymore — the crisis has wiped it out. So now liberalism is in an awful dilemma: power, but without the means to use it; a consensus around nationalizing huge swaths of the market, but without the ability to get it to deliver on the purchase. Later he and his fellow panelists qualified the idea to death or dismissed it, but shit, you know?

MEGAN: I think Boehner proves there isn't necessarily a consensus around nationalizing vast swaths of the market, but I think it's hilarious that it's not because of the idea of nationalizing anything but because of taxes. And, yes, this financial crisis fucks up pretty much every major expenditure program the Obama camp had on its agenda — Pelosi's already talking a wealth surtax to pay for the bailout, which then screws Obama's tax plans, which screws health care, etc. The only thing it might prompt would be a major tax system overhaul, which we need anyway. But Charlie Rangel's too deep in the shit right now to be able to put that together.

SPENCER: I can't tell if what you're saying is reassuring! Dumb it down.

MEGAN: Um, no, it wasn't reassuring. I don't have The Hope.

SPENCER: Speaking of hopelessness, have a good wedding

MEGAN: We toasted the End of Fun last night. And then annoyed a gay bar by singing "Going to the Chapel."

SPENCER: I see from your Twitter feed that your gay karaoke friends inserted SUCK MY COCK into the "Sweet Caroline" refrain. How to get Fenway Park to do that? Come on Boston fans, out of the closet with ALL of you.

MEGAN: It was way better than shouting "BUH BUH BUM" but I'm betting they just did it because they were Yankees fans.

• Congressional lawmakers came to terms on the bailout package today, several hours before John McCain got done giving his Clinton Global Initiative speech and arrived on the Hill to rescue the American economy. [NY Times]
• That doesn't mean he's going to be at the debate tomorrow, of course. There might be something else he could rescue for the good of the nation instead of sucking it up and debating Obama, he's sure. [NY Times]
• Mississippi's Republican governor, Haley Barbour, says they're all systems go for a debate. Obama plans to have a townhall meeting without McCain if McCain is too much of a coward to debate him. [CNN, Huffington Post]
• By the way, McCain's "suspension" saved his campaign $1 million in ads and generated a shitload of earned media. It also didn't stop him from campaigning. [Huffington Post, Huffington Post]

• Meanwhile, Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric continued apace, with her repeating the ridiculousness about Russia being close enough to nuke Alaska and calling for a logistically impossible surge in Afghanistan "lead us to victory there as it has proven to have done in Iraq." Oh, brother. No wonder they don't want her debating Biden. [DailyKos, Huffington Post]
• Also, she might make an appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend. Does anyone else hear the siren song of a drunken live blog? [Newser]
• Jewsvote.org and and Israeli production company both released films today to try to counteract polls that show the Jewish vote swinging for McCain. The latter group, though, calls it "The Great Schlep" and has Sarah Silverman, so they win. [Time, Huffington Post]

SPENCER: So should we go forward with Crappy Hour or can you tell Anna that the seriousness of the financial crisis merits a suspension of the feature?

MEGAN: Oh, sure, I mean, you and I really need to get up in the Hill this morning and involve ourselves in negotiations for the bailout package that we've been heretofore uninvolved in, because our presence and our presence alone will resolve the 3 days of negotiations. It'll just take a few days. She'll understand. It's a crisis after all. And totally unlike the mortgage crisis that spawned legislation that we ignored a couple of months ago. This one is important.

SPENCER: Country First, goddammit.

MEGAN: This is not a time for partisan politics!

SPENCER: I think in 42 days, we're going to look back on this as the day McCain lost the election. A more massively unforced error I cannot imagine.

MEGAN: I guess it depends on whether you're Steve Schmidt and think that debating Obama on Friday (or having Palin debate Biden next week) would be a bigger error.

SPENCER: While I was watching Bush's speech last night, a whole other dimension of error occurred to me: why does it benefit McCain to go meet with the least popular president in history, the one whose legacy McCain has to distance himself from?

MEGAN: The only thing I can think is what some Republipundit said last night, which is that it forces Obama to interact positively with Bush, inoculating McCain to a degree, and it might allow McCain to call a shitty bailout bill a "Bush-Obama" bill. If that's the actual thinking — if there is actual thinking involved in this decision — then kudos.

SPENCER: No, that doesn't match the timeline. Remember, at 8:30 a.m. yesterday, Obama called McCain and proposed a joint statement. McCain responded affirmatively around 2ish, and then an hour later announced this no-debate stunt. The likeliest explanation is that McCain huddled with Davis and Schmidt and thought about how to throw the ball further downfield. But here they miscalculated almost completely: SurveyUSA found only 10 percent think the debate should be put off.

MEGAN: Well, at least Schmidt and Davis managed to find some people in the tank for them.

SPENCER: I guess the Bush thing could have been trying to bind Obama, but he can't turn down a presidential invite, and could just as easily put out a release as tepid as... the joint statement he did with McCain.

MEGAN: According to Obama, though, McCain brought it up at the 2:30 conference call and Obama said, let's have our people discuss it when they're talking about the joint statement. So it was on McCain's mind before. But, yeah, they were in the midst of negotiating that statement when McCain made his announcement. So, it's unsurprising that the statement is tepid.

SPENCER: Meanwhile McCain looks like a complete pussy. He's too chickenshit to debate Obama — dude, al-Qaeda bombed the fucking USS Cole in October 2000 and Bush and Gore still debated! — and now looks like a supplicant to Bush. One unforced error on top of another.

MEGAN: Oooh, nice catch on the USS Cole. Also, I'd like to point out the absurdity of the idea that Congress will be negotiating this at 9:00 on Friday night.

SPENCER: Here's another unforced error! If you're suspending the campaign, don't send out talking points on suspending the campaign! Sorry to make you open a PDF.

MEGAN: I love how we can fix the economy by the time the markets open on Monday with legislation. Presto-chango! It's fixed!

SPENCER: We don't even really need to comment on the transparent foolishness of this stunt. Within 30 minutes the bigfoot journalists on secret listservs I'm on digested it and became immediately appalled. It's a waste of time to even treat the idea seriously.

MEGAN: Dude, I started laughing hysterically when I heard. Like, it might have been the 3 cups of coffee, but I was wiping away tears listening to it, I was laughing that hard.

SPENCER: The only right-wing journalists still shilling for this are at the Weekly Standard. Even NRO readers aren't buying the dog food. Look at what Bill Kristol wrote:

As for the question of Friday night's debate, which some in the media seem to think more important than saving the financial system—if the negotiations are still going on in D.C., McCain should offer to send Palin to debate Obama! Or he can take a break from the meetings, fly down at the last minute himself, and turn a boring foreign policy debate, in which he and Obama would repeat well-rehearsed arguments, into a discussion about leadership and decisiveness. And if the negotiations are clearly on a path to success, then McCain can say he can now afford to leave D.C., fly down, and the debate would become a victory lap for McCain.

I read that and thought of the scene in Boogie Nights when a coked-out Dirk Diggler tries desperately to get erect, tears rolling down his face, talking to his cock like "come on... come on..."

MEGAN: Um, I can't believe you just made me think about Bill Kristol's cock just there. I love this part, though, Country First my ass.

Of course his motives were partly election-related. But "the interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place."

McCain is America! America is McCain! What's right for him is right for everyone! Quick, everyone swap spouses! Call your wife a cunt!

SPENCER: I call Kim Kagan. I will sex her up like Color Me Badd.

MEGAN: Will you give her your dick in a boxx?

SPENCER: Ohhh, maybe Noemie Emery. I hear she crazy. Like, files-her-pieces-on-legal-legal-paper crazy.

MEGAN: Oh, her poor interns.

SPENCER: Should probably record a take-off on a Biggie song. "Dreams (Of Fucking A Right-Wing Bitch)." Noemie, I'm just playing! ... I'm saying!

MEGAN: Man, I think we could totally make a YouTube video out of that.

SPENCER: Back to McCain. (Yo, Meghan, don't take me seriously girl. I know you're reading. Don't mind what I say about your dad. Hit me up. 281-330-8004. My girlfriend doesn't have to know.)

MEGAN: Hey, look, Cynthia McKinney, Bob Barr and Ralph Nader are offering their services. I think that should be McCain's punishment if he bails on Friday. He should have to debate them, and Obama gets a night to himself.

SPENCER: How does McCain dig himself out of this? The debate is clearly going to happen tomorrow.

MEGAN: If it doesn't, he's cost the taxpayers of Mississippi $5 million for his little stunt. Oh, how do you like your low-spending Republicans now, Red State Mississippi? At least Obama gives a shit about how he spends your money.

SPENCER: He's going to have to slink down to Mississippi, backtracking on all this, an object of total ridicule for Obama. And McCain's temper cannot handle ridicule.

MEGAN: Yeah, I don't think him showing up tomorrow is going to be some big victory lap around Ole Miss, Bill Kristol's masturbatory epistles aside.

SPENCER: I'm kind of expecting Nancy Phflorfhfthflhflfhthloger to put out a statement about how McCain spent FIVE AND A HALF YEARS not being able to debate anyone.

MEGAN: He was just doing what he always does! Like with the Surge, he was doing what he thought was right, electoral consequences be damned!! Nancy Pfuckingsucks actually said that yesterday.

SPENCER: No! She did????

MEGAN: Yes, I heard it on MSNBC, but I was already laughing so hard I couldn't laugh any harder.

SPENCER: Republican pollster Scott Rasmussen has Obama up two points in... North Carolina. End times! This guy is fucked. He just lost the election. McCain better pray for a terrorist attack or some shit.

MEGAN: I think he already masturbates to that. I don't think you can pray one-handed.

• John McCain announced this afternoon that he is suspending his campaigning and postponing Friday's debate to head back to Washington to deal with the financial crisis. Basically, he's decided that it's more important for him to come back to D.C. to weigh in on a legislative issue on which he has little expertise than to talk directly to Americans about why they should vote for him in less than 6 weeks because politics should take a back seat right now. There's nothing political about that, nope! [Washington Post]
• By the way, John McCain's the most absent Senator of the 110th Congress, having missed 64 percent of the votes since January 2007 (more than Obama or Tim Johnson, who had a stroke). He missed voting on a number of pieces of Iraq legislation, the GI Bill, Medicare reform, the economic stimulus package, bills on the house crisis, FISA and the Lebetter pay equity act, among others. But, this, yo, this is some important shit right here. And it's just a coincidence that he tanked in the polls this week. [Washington Post, Think Progress, Huffington Post, The Health Care Blog, AmericaBlog, Tuscon Citizen, Writes Like She Talks]

• Barack Obama gave a statement this afternoon that was intended to be an announcement of the joint statement he'd agreed to about the bailout with McCain, only to get off the phone and watch McCain get on stage and tell the world he thinks they should postpone the debate. Obama didn't refuse to, but he thinks the American people want to hear what the candidates have to say and that the next President should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Advantage? Possibly Obama.
• A new Pew research poll finds that Obama does 2-3 percent better when pollsters call people who only have cell phones. Yeah, he's got your youth vote. In most polls, that's the margin of error, too. [US News & World Report]
• Even Fox News' polls have Obama up. [Real Clear Politics]
• Bill Clinton says he hasn't campaigned more vigorously for Obama because of the Jewish holidays. He should probably just shut up now and try actually campaigning. [Politico]
• Katie Couric's Sarah Palin interviews start tonight. Watch there, comment and cry together in frustration here. [CBS News]

• Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chair Bernanke were on the Hill today, metaphorical hats in hands, asking for gobs of money and the ability to spend it with no oversight. Unlike what Sarah Palin actually said about the Bridge To Nowhere, Congress told them, "No thanks." [Washington Post]
• Dick Cheney tried his hand at asking nicely, but House Republicans, knowing Cheney well, told him to go fuck himself. A couple of them then fist-bumped Pat Leahy on the way out of the meeting. [Politico]
• Ahmadinejad doesn't care who we elect because he plans to keep building his nukes regardless. [CNN]
• The Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for a Georgia man convicted of killing a police office on the sole basis of eyewitness testimony since recanted. Scalia, Alito and Roberts must have taken a really long lunch today. [CNN]

• Rachel Maddow is kicking Larry King's wrinkly old-man ass. [Huffington Post]
• Even Fox News thinks it's "unprecedented" that McCain and Palin aren't allowing reporters to even shout questions at them. No, really. They're pissed too. [Huffington Post]
• But it's totally in line with other potential McCain Administration policies, like not talking to Israel, Syrian or the Palestinians about that whole peace-process thing. That bores Johnny. [JTA]
• Rush Limbaugh: more of a fucked-up racist piece of shit than you thought. [Think Progress]
• And, finally, some men's delusions know no bounds. [Politico]

• Good news first: Obama is up in the polls in Pennsylvania and Iowa and tied in Minnesota and Nevada. Also, most people blame Republicans for the current economy crisis. Unfortunately, he's pulling staff from North Dakota, Georgia, Idaho and Alaska. That can't be good. [CNN, CNN, CNN]
• A new poll shows that, since putting Palin on the ticket, McCain now polls evenly with Obama on the question of who understands women and what's important to us. Obama used to have a 34 point lead. [Politico]
• Obama's got a new ad in which he (rightly) accused McCain's health care plan of being a massive program of deregulation, sort of like how McCain used to love the deregulation of financial markets, too. That the kind of change even an NRA member might fear more than an ammo tax these days. [Huffington Post]

• Speaking of, the NRA has started running ads against Obama saying that he wants to tax guns and ammo. That's all they got? Taxes? No more "cold dead hands" now that Charlton Heston's hands are cold and dead? [Marc Ambinder]
• John McCain's Brazilian mistress is out there talking about him. She thinks he's still cute. We think visualizing John McCain boning is our new weight-loss plan. [Daily Mail]
• Biden's having trouble prepping for her debates because —as we've pointed out — Palin's record is so fucking thin he's basically just prepping to debate McCain. Aw, Joe, it's ok, she doesn't much know what she thinks on a lot of issues either. [Politico]
• In a completely undeserved casualty of the liberal hatred of Sarah Palin, sales of the Chilean winery Palin's Syrahs have bottomed out in San Francisco. Good wineries should not be made to suffer! [Politico]
• Unsurprisingly, George Bush doesn't think CEOs should be financially penalized for running our country's financial system into the ground. But this was the same guy who thought giving the Secretary of the Treasury unlimited powers without judicial oversight was a good idea, so what the fuck does he know? [Think Progress, Huffington Post]

SPENCER: So I come home from one of the most economically deprived areas on the planet, one that's already experiencing a high tide of war-derived violence, where official corruption makes everything worse, only to discover that the financial sector has issued a suicide note and submitted itself to the unaccountable will the most corrupt and incompetent government in recent memory. Why didn't you just tell me I should have stayed in Afghanistan? I had to pay bribes upon bribes to dudes in Kabul and I didn't get bailed out from that, either.

MEGAN: What? The de facto nationalization of our financial services sector wasn't a good homecoming? How about the fact that the Bush Administration has snuck in this little clause about how Paulson's actions in terms of ever bailing anything out or, say, nationalizing anything else that may or may not need it are completely not subject to judicial review? As though we haven't had enough of what the Bush Administration thinks shouldn't be subject to judicial review... But, it'll be okay because Nancy swears they won't roll over this time, the way the Dems did on offshore drilling while you were gone and on FISA before you left.

SPENCER: Also I understand the Afghanistan war sooooo much better than I do the financial crisis, and when you & Moe tried to explain the meltdown to me at her birthday party I ended up even more confused, so HELP. Is all my money gone?

MEGAN: Possibly. I checked my stock portfolio last night for the first time since August and then broke into the tequila. The problem isn't whether your money is gone, it's that if you have in in a 401k or an IRA, you can't get it out without losing 30% more of what's left.

SPENCER: Yeah, I saw that my old halfway-home the Center for American Progress is against the Paulson plan, as liberals appear to have emerged from the weekend shellshock with skepticism that may or may not prove impotent

MEGAN: I'm going with... it'll prove impotent, like all their other so-called outrage. Congress kvetching about abuse of executive authority is like poor people kvetching about taxing the rich: they don't like it when it applied to them, but they all secretly think they'll be in the catbird seat one day.

SPENCER: And you know what, fuck it — I hate retreating to meta-points and cliches to mask the fact that I don't know what I'm talking about, so let me say that I don't know what the fuck is going on and math is hard and please explain this to me. I miss Afghanistan

MEGAN: Except for the Howitzers, I assume.

SPENCER: Are you kidding me? The choice is between the Howitzers firing or the base where you're trying to enjoy some Chicken a la KBR getting rocketed from a nearby mountain ridge. Howitzers produce the most comforting sound since whale songs.

MEGAN: The best thing to know about finance is to read the fine print. Your checking account is fine. If you have a savings account, that's fine too. The government has decided to pull a fast one and insure your money market, if you have one — or if any of your 401K or IRA money is invested in one. Whatever has been invested in the stock market, in your case, probably via mutual funds in your 401K is volatile. But it's ok, because you can't withdraw it for another 35 years anyway. So, the best you can do is either suck up your losses and keep your money there, or decide that you can't suck up any more and transfer it into money markets temporarily under the auspices of your 401K.

SPENCER: I have a money market account — is that fucked? Also, and I know how stupid this makes me sound, but is my, uh, PayPal account OK? MEN SHOULD NOT MONKEY AROUND WITH FINANCE. Like Raekwon said, I should've stayed in JobCorps.

MEGAN: Well, it's not fucked because the government decided to insure it last week. So, it's fucked a little because everything is fucked but it's not gone. And your PayPal has nothing to do with nothing, so that's fine.

SPENCER: So if I have, say, my savings in a money market account, that is — really, really really dumb it down for me, Megan — good or bad? Like should I stop IMing and go to the bank right now?

MEGAN: The government decided last week that they will insure your deposits in it the same way your savings account is insured, more or less. But, partly, it depends on what financial institution you have it invested in and how much money you might or might not have lost. So, if you've lost a bunch, I might leave it in and see if you can recoup. If you haven't, I would take it out and stick it in an ING savings account. If you don't need access to it, put it in a CD with a bank. (CD= Certificate of Deposit, it's a long-term savings account with higher interest rates depending on how long you agree not to ask for it back)

-14 minutes-

SPENCER: AND NOW THE FUCKING INTERNET IS BALKING ON ME! After all I've done for it.

MEGAN: The Internet is a cruel mistress.

SPENCER: I've supported the internet for its entire career. Sorry, what were you saying?

MEGAN: I was telling you, basically, that without knowing your exact financial situation I can't tell you exactly what to do but that you're not nearly as fucked as I am.

SPENCER: oh JESUS really? Am I picking up your tab at the meetup tomorrow?

MEGAN: No, it's fine, I wasn't using the stock market as a checking account or anything, so my short- and medium-term investments are all in protected places. But my long-term stuff is all in high-risk as my financial adviser recommended, so my 401K is looking pretty ragged and my stock is down 10 points which really hurt seeing that last night but I'll be fine. Oh, and I can pretty much never sell my condo, but other than that I'm fine. Excuse me, though, if I cry a little in my tequila shots tomorrow. .

SPENCER: Tears in tequila act like salt on the rim of the glass. See, the bright side! I have a friend who just bought a condo in this market, and I have no idea what he was thinking.

MEGAN: Probably that interest rates are crazy low and stuff is being sold off at fire-sale rates.

SPENCER: I don't know what it says about me that I am somehow more nervous about this than I was accompanying a midnight dismounted patrol on a dirt field that the metal detectors told us was full of IEDs. And speaking of things to worry about, the AP is saying racism is costing Obama 6 points in the polls" but Nate Silver, the breakthrough blogger of the 2008 elections says it's bullshit and Rikyrah from J&JP says the AP's motivations are suspect anyway, so what do you think?

MEGAN: Well, from a statistical analysis perspective, I think that it's really hard to tell the impact of race like that without relying on crazy hypotheticals that aren't particularly predictive.

SPENCER: This part of Nate's analysis wasn't particularly comforting:

even if it is true that Barack Obama's race puts him at something like a 6-point disadvantage with the population as a whole, the margin is probably more like 4-5 points among likely voters.

Oh, well then!

MEGAN: Well, I mean, that could be true or not. In any given election 40-60% of voters don't turn out at all, and voter turnout is correlated to education and economic levels. But, also, statistics are not a predictor of future behavior.

SPENCER: Here's an explanation of the AP's methodology that I still am not equipped to evaluate. Jesus, I'm batting .1000 today, aren't I? Too dumb to discuss the topics we ourselves chose to discuss. I should have stayed in Afghanistan.

MEGAN: Nah, isn't this why you have me around? And I'm not in Afghanistan. I mean, one thing that really stuck out in that methodological analysis is that the people polled had to have landlines even though the surveys were internet-based.

SPENCER: True on both counts. I wouldn't be able to participate even. Who has a landline? I think even my mom is getting rid of hers, and she screens her calls like a champion. So the AP racepoll is a tangle of faulty math and sophistry, then?

MEGAN: I think it is. The problem with statistics is the one cited in one of my favorite college courses, Microsociology. Statistically speaking, 1 in 5 African-American men will be imprisoned. What does that say about any given black man? Absolutely nothing. It's not a predictor of behavior. It's a statistic, and that itself is a snapshot in time of a status, not a behavior.

SPENCER: You need to team up with Mark Penn to write Microsociology: The Book. What does this poll say about snipers and the race vote, I wonder. methodologies inspire as little confidence as McCain has in Palin's debating skills:

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.
McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

NONE DARE CALL IT SEXISM.

MEGAN: Well, see, she just needs more "education and training" and then she can close the debate gap just like McCain proposes closing the wage gap. It's just too bad she can't get that in time to make a difference, sort of like American women as a whole can't. But they're still not going to support the Ledbetter Act, that is too much of a burden for businesses to swallow, paying women equally for the work that they do.

SPENCER: Speaking of Lilly Ledbetter, Christy notes that Obama is FINALLY using her in an ad. Also about the debates: Don't you think it's odd that the press believes the debates to be important, even though there's basically no evidence since at least Carter-Reagan 1980 that they've ever played a leading role in deciding an election?

MEGAN: I think it's one last opportunity for a spectacular fuck-up is why.

SPENCER: You can't win an election based on the debates — Kerry kicked Bush's ass in all three, remember, in 2004 — and I wonder if you can even lose an election through debate-ineptitude, which is clearly the McCain camp's worry. Yeah, I'm not convinced that's even true. Remember "you forgot Poland" and "wanna buy some wood"? I didn't think so. The only thing I remember from the VP debate last year is that Cheney lied about never meeting Edwards in the Senate and — oh yeah and that Cheney's daughter is what you people call a Lezebel.

MEGAN: I guess you're right, but I still think the interest lies in hoping that one of them flames out spectacularly. Plus, I'll repeat something smart I said this weekend: Biden, in particular, needs to go back and watch old tapes, and I'm not talking of VP debates. He needs to go check out Clinton-Lazio from 2000 and the Democratic Massachusetts gubernatorial debates featuring Shannon O'Brian to see what not to do when debating a woman.

SPENCER: Yes, right you are. You found the evidence refuting my point: Lazio lost his Senate race in 2000 by appearing to physically threaten HRC. If Crappy Hour were a debate, it's clear you won all three rounds this morning I could be an asshole and contend that Senate races are different than presidential races, but I'd like to set an example for John McCain and graciously concede when I've been beaten. I really miss Afghanistan.

MEGAN: Well, but I listened to whale songs instead of Howitzers for 2 weeks. And you risked life and limb to report important stuff from Afghanistan. So, I think we're at least even.

SPENCER: Okay, I'm going to the bank now to see that I still have money. I may IM you in a panic after lunch.

• The Dow lost about another 450 points today even though the federal government has decided to buy out (read: nationalize) anything they need to to keep out economy from collapsing. [Washington Post]
• Speaking of, Morgan Stanley might merge with Wachovia, which would make Goldman Sachs the only remaining stand-alone investment bank in the United States. Seriously. [NY Times]
• But it's all going to be okay because the Bush Administration might use the end of its term in office to create a whole new agency dedicated to buying up all the bad debt and defunct financial institutions that its policies created in the last 7.5 years. Hey, did I mention the word "nationalization" already? Good. [NY Times]
• Hey, look! Something shiny! Don't watch the end of capitalism! Lori Drew is moving her family to an undisclosed location. [St. Charles Journal]

• Hillary Clinton canceled an appearance at an anti-Iran rally because the organizers thought it would be a supercoolfun idea to put her on the dais with Sarah Palin less than two months before the election and didn't think it necessary to inform her. Um, obviously. [Associated Press]
• The polls show McCain and Obama pretty damn tight in too damn many battleground states. [Marc Ambinder]
• Known elitist Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild and former major Democratic figure says all kinds of unbelievable crap about why she's now supporting McCain, but the funniest part is when she says it's about voter disenfranchisement and didn't know that the Republicans are actively seeking to disenfranchise legal voters in the general election to help he new best buddy. Ok, here's a woman you can hate on. Please, enjoy. [Huffington Post]
• McCain and Palin will be doing their deathly tango on Larry King tonight (and feel free to use this as an open thread if you're not watching Project Runway), but before that Swampland's Ana Marie Cox and I will be liveblogging her own torture: sitting through a McCain townhall meeting. Join us back here at 7! [Think Progress]