LATOYA: Where do you want to start this morning? We've got a piping hot plate of hot mess to go through.

MEGAN: Well, being as this is a women's blog, we should do something woman-y, and I nominate the news that the McCain campaign spent $110,000 on hair and make-up for Sarah Palin in 10 weeks and $180,000 on clothing and accessories for the Palin clan — which is $30,000 more than initially reported.

LATOYA: Oh, I forgot to tell you.

MEGAN: That, by the way, means they spent more on hair and make-up and clothing and accessories than my condo is worth.

LATOYA: I have personally instituted a ban on discussing anything to do with Palin. As far as I am concerned, she is irrelevant. If she manages a resurrection and comes back to haunt us in 2012, so be it.

MEGAN: What are you going to do when she opens up an exploratory committee in 2010?

LATOYA: But until then, I'd love to see her fade into obscurity. She should be remembered, fondly, like Ross Perot.

MEGAN: Ok, but can we discuss that kind of money?

LATOYA: Thanks for the memories of shout outs at VP debates, but you need to mosey along now. Take your folksy ways and return to the ice cave. I mean, we can discuss the money. But somehow, I can't muster up indignant outrage.

MEGAN: Like, I will guarantee that there's no way on God's green earth that I have spent $110,000 on hair and make-up in my lifetime, even though I've been highlighting my hair for about 6 years.

LATOYA: Maybe if I had bought that whole "salt of the earth, of the white people, heartland of real America" tripe they were selling. Homegirl was just an opportunist. Cindy McCain was rocking nice clothes — why shouldn't she?

MEGAN: Totally. Look, if RNC donors want to give me $180,000 in clothes, I will totally run for office as a Republican. They can even call me A Maverick over and over again because of my support of reproductive choice.

LATOYA: And it's obvious they had the money. If the first card maxed out and they let her keep going, I say get what you get. Credit Cards come with limits.

MEGAN: But Republican money never ends!

LATOYA: That's why they're Republicans. They're supposed to have money, want to keep money, spend their money the way they want, and tell the gov't to mind their damn business. That's what I expect from Republicans. It's comforting that way.

MEGAN: Yeah, I get that. So, moving on, want to talk about NOW and the Feminist Majority Foundation going metaphorical balls to the wall to promote Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy for Clinton's Senate seat?

LATOYA: Why not? Obviously, the dice are lucky.

MEGAN: Because I don't like the idea that a woman's seat ought to be filled by a woman, but McCarthy does have an established record on women's rights issues and is generally cool. But, mostly, I wish to continue pressing the point that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is an unmitigated casual racist not deserving of elected office but certainly not deserving of an appointment to a lifetime Senate seat by David Paterson, the state's first African-American governor.

LATOYA: Hmm, well, I am not so sure about Cuomo. Then again, I'm only thinking about his record at HUD.

MEGAN: Well, then, there's a question. If you have a good record of doing decent things for the community as a whole while tossing around the phrase "shucking and jiving" in reference to an African-American candidate for the Presidency, followed by a steadfast insistence that it is actually not a racist term after the world notices that you said it, what should a politically active person do? Because I choose to call him a racist and think that he should go fuck himself.

LATOYA: Oh, I wasn't sure about the appointment, not your comment on casual racism. I think his HUD record proves he doesn't care about black people.

MEGAN: Then, yeah, fuck that guy.

LATOYA: But back to the original point, I understand what you're saying about not wanting to do this tit for tat seating thing. But I can understand where NOW is coming from, especially with the whispers of sexism around this bailout committee.

Frank credited the current resistance to doing more about foreclosures to ruffled male feathers. “I think part of the problem now is that, to be honest, Shelia Bair has annoyed the Old Boys Club.” He likened the situation to several regulators “up in the treehouse with a ‘No Girls Allowed’ sign.”

MEGAN: I know! I could not believe that shit when I heard it from Moe. I was like, wait, the new Democratic Treasury Secretary is mad about the (technically independent) FDIC chair telling Bush to go fuck himself while she's trying to save Real Americans?

LATOYA: Pretty much. Just call it the "Fuck that bitch" doctrine. She is showing people up so she has got to go.

MEGAN: Also, I think saying that she has to go is akin to when McCain said he would fire Chris Cox at the SEC. I mean, it's their fucking government, you think they could learn who is supposed to be independent — and therefore given a term — and who is supposed to be a sycophant. Tim Geithner either needs to say a bunch more stupid shit so Obama withdraws his name, or get his head screwed on straight. Yo, Tim, you can throw all the money you want at Wall Street and get them to lower interest rates, but if no one has a fucking house in 2 years, the economy is still going to be fucked, and that's what Sheila Bair is trying to prevent, you dumb cunt.

LATOYA: I think prevention is a dirty word to some people. Kind of reminds them of socialism.

MEGAN: But the Republicans promised that we were electing a dirty socialist! They promised!

LATOYA: The Republicans are promising a lot of stuff, but one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing. Like this rift between the religious right and the ...um...regular right.

MEGAN: This part is kind of awesome.

Ponnuru acknowledges that social conservatives “could present themselves more attractively,” and “pick their spokesmen more wisely.”

No, asshole, at the end of the day, you're still advocating for a fucking theocracy and I am gonna notice no matter how much you pay for Sarah Palin's stylists.

LATOYA: She even used the term Oogedy-Boodgey.

First, to the origins. “Oogedy-boogedy” was bequeathed to me several years ago by my dear, departed friend, political cartoonist Doug Marlette. We were doubtless talking about our shared Southern heritage, about which one does not speak long without mentioning religion.

And, you betcha, oogedy-boogedy.

Marlette, whose childhood was spent among Pentecostals, Baptists, and other passionate believers, had religion in his bones and forgot more scripture than most preachers can recall on a given Sunday. He also won a Pulitzer Prize for his lampooning of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (peace be upon them) and their “PTL Club.”

If Jim and Tammy Faye put you in mind of oogedy-boogedy, you’re getting warm.

Now, I'm going to be saying Oogedy Boogedy all day.

MEGAN: And, Republican dudes, if you can't figure out what it means, I don't think you get to call me an Un-Real American anymore.

LATOYA: Rick Warren, talking about capping foreign leaders because the bible says so? Oogedy Boogedy!

MEGAN: Also, how is the world not fucking scared of that shit? Spencer said it best: if it was a Muslim preacher saying on national TV abroad that the Koran says they need to suicide bomb us, we would be flipping the fuck out. But a white guy? No, that's cool.

LATOYA: Selective memory. Side effect of the oogedy boogedy.

MEGAN: So, is the oogedy-boogedy something you catch from the Bible, or from other Jeebus-freaks?

LATOYA: Apparently, the bible is OK. It's the freak part that leads to the oogedy boogedy. There have been other strange happenings as well, outside of religion. Like Michelle Malkin talking sense.

MEGAN: Michelle Malkin has been talking some sense on and off again all year and it is sort of freaking me the fuck out in general.

LATOYA: She's done this a couple times before. I'm always kind of shocked, because I can't reconcile a sensible column with the author of "In Defense of Internment." I don't know whether to read or avoid. On her worst days, she makes me want to put my eyes out, Oedipus style, so I do not have to see what senselessness has wrought. But on other days, I wonder if I should move her and Kathleen Parker into regular rotation.

MEGAN: Is it terribly condescending to think that Malkin grew up a little? That after wallowing around in all that scary, informed-only-by-fear filth she sort of looked around at her compatriots, commenters and ass-kissers and thought to herself, damn, these people are crazy?

LATOYA: Then again, we both now she is one "banana cream pie"column (that link is NSFW) away from being in they "why did I ever think we could hang" category. And speaking of even more crazy shit — do you know they are trying to challenge Obama's citizenship?

MEGAN: I am hoping the problem is not just that other wannabe columnists have not decided to out-Malkin Malkin by being crazier, thus making her seem less insane in the process. Yeah, dude, that is some crazytown fucking shit. There are suits claiming the birth certificate is fake, and others claiming that because his father wasn't American, he doesn't qualify.

LATOYA: Remember that Colbert Report segment on Obama going to this crazy foreign nation of Hawaii? Yeah, someone must have forgotten the Colbert Report isn't real news.

MEGAN: Dude! If only! Actually, they are claiming that his mother actually gave birth to him in Kenya but faked that it happened in Hawai'i.

LATOYA: I mean, damn, the birth certificate is online. Hawaii published a column announcing it. WTF?

MEGAN: In this alterna-universe, claiming Hawai'i doesn't count is actually less cray-cray than what they are really claiming. They claim that all that stuff has been faked, as though he's an actual Manchurian candidate.

LATOYA: Oh wait, are you talking about that guy who is suing "the "Peoples Association of Human, Animals Conceived God/s and Religions, John McCain (and) USA Govt." The plaintiff previously sought to sue Wikipedia and "All News Media." Or is he just some fresh crazy? And Clarence Thomas picked up this lawsuit, to presumably dismiss it, which is making blogger like Karynthia get pissed off for having to defend him.

MEGAN: Dude, Alan Keyes filed one of the lawsuits. There are multiple strains of crazy at work.

LATOYA: I expected that. Do you want to talk about terrorism crazy now, or international government crazy?

MEGAN: Oh, it's so hard to decide. I was going to say that we should read what the nanny of the Jewish toddler said about rescuing him because it's sort of awesome in a We-Are-The-World kind of way that transcends race, but we can stick with crazy.

"First thing is that a baby is very important for me and this baby is something very precious to me and that's what made me just not think anything — just pick up the baby and run," Samuel said.

"When I hear gunshot, it's not one or 20. It's like a hundred gunshots," she added. "Even I'm a mother of two children so I just pick up the baby and run. Does anyone think of dying at the moment when there's a small, precious baby?"

LATOYA: I applaud that woman. I am also giving a half-hearted applause to Condi for calling out Mugabe and his general douchbagginess toward his people. The applause is half hearted because we only selectively seek to remove dictators that are screwing with us. Or, rather, standing in the way of something we want.

MEGAN: Right, although, if we're giving Condi a golf clap, we probably have to shout out Raila Odinga, the Kenyan PM, who sorta beat her to the punch on that.

LATOYA: He gets full applause.

MEGAN: I mean, Odinga even beat South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, who probably could have done it as his first act in office or something.

LATOYA: Meanwhile, our neighbors to the South have crazy drug war drama and our neighbors to the North have crazy Parliament drama. Is it just me, or are global current events starting to read like The Days of Our Lives?

MEGAN: OMG, Latoya, seriously, I used to watch Days of Our Lives sort of obsessively. And by sort of obsessively, I mean, once upon a time I stood in line at the mall to get an autography from and picture with Matthew Ashford. That I still have.

LATOYA: And your verdict is?

MEGAN: Days of Our Lives once featured a plot line in which Marlena, possessed by the actual devil wreaked havoc on Salem. I think it's a valid comparison to world events.

LATOYA: Hahahahahahahha — true! I'm about to go get some breakfast (Mocha Hut!) but I did want to leave with this gem. The ignored truth about Iraq is contained in an old ass booklet.

Republished in 2008 by Dark Horse Publications, the tiny booklet for troops heading to protect the Persian Gulf’s oilfields and supply routes is a pronunciation, cultural and religious survival manual whose wisdom applies to Iraq (i-RAHK) during the era of the Toyota pickup truck and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as much as to the age of the camel and the Luftwaffe.

“Show respect to all older persons,” writes the anonymous author.

“American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not. It may not be quite that simple. But then again it could.”

MEGAN: Sigh.

LATOYA: The book is so old that Muslim is still spelled Moslem and Israel doesn't exist yet (while Iran is a footnote) and yet, the advice is still kind of pertinent.

MEGAN:

“You aren’t going to Iraq to change the Iraqis. Just the opposite.”

LATOYA: Alright — I am out. Pumpkin chai and salmon cake on a bagel, here I come. Thanks, Megan for a fun week, and thanks Jezzies, for the fun conversations. (And pics! Loved that!)

MOE: Well, at least we still have The Corner

MEGAN: Aw, too bad SUCKAH. Go drink you bitter juice in your bitter house and cling to your God and your guns and your false idea that this country belongs to you and yours and always has and always will. We won, square and fair despite everything your guys tried to do to keep Americans from voting — and it was the biggest turn out since women got the right to vote.

MOE: What's there to agonize about here?

MEGAN: Four years in a WH, which he's already done, vs. the rest of his life in a House seat, with increasing power. I don't know, I'm a big believer in the legislative branch, I want some big guns in it. Every President tries to increase the power of the Executive at the legislative's expense, and look where it's gotten us. We should also talk about the end of gay marriage in California, the dark cloud on an otherwise sunny day.

MOE: I guess, but this WH, elected by much wider margins than his last, occupied by a much more historically significant holder than that administration, versus 434 other guys, no precarious minority to try and hold on to, etc. etc. So…where do we begin? For some reason I woke up this morning thinking of the moment when he thanked his two sisters by name and then addressed all his other brothers and sisters, and I thought not of that new illegal immigrant guy but the guy running a small business in Shenzhen. I bet that guy had a pretty good party this morning.

MEGAN: I think most people had pretty good parties, from the looks of things. I was actually sort of fascinated last night, flipping channels, Juan Williams, Eugene Robinson and Roland Martin (Fox, MSNBC, and CNN, respectively) were all crying. I mean, these are men who, while not anchors, are literally quite close to the tops of their professions, and yet it took this to make them feel actually accepted, was the sense that I got. It was kind of amazing.

MOE: Seventy four million dollars spent Proposition 8, oy. In a state flirting with default with an awe-inspiring foreclosure rate where 30$ of car purchases in 2007 were financed with home equity, someone has seventy four million dollars to spend on this stupid thing. I'm actually not that sad about it right now. It's a "Yup, still America!" moment. Hundreds of thousands of people in that state voted in the first black president while simultaneously voting to exclude gays from an exponentially more quotidian "institution," an "institution" one associates in much of that state with Vegas. What is the divorce rate in California anyway? Oh god, whatever.

MEGAN: The Institution of Straight Marriage, brought to you by the Knights of Columbus and the Church of Latter Day Saints.

MOE: One of my favorite discoveries in the context of researching Barney Frank was an Orange County former congressman named BIll Dannemeyer who sponsored a bill to expel Barney Frank over his whorescandal.

MEGAN: Please tell me he was a client.

MOE: No no no, he was one of those rare rabid homophobes who just seemed to me to be indiscriminately obsessed with everything he finds to be "outrageous."

MEGAN: You mean "one of those rare rabid homophobes" that isn't self-loathing and obsessed with other men's penii, right?

MOE: Right one of those rare rabid homophobes that isn't a self-hating homo I guess? I called him up; at this point he is a lot less fascinated by gay sex — he did maintain it was an unhealthy lifestyle that had no doubt taken a toll on Barney Frank's rectum — than he is by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Council of Foreign Relations, which control everything.

MEGAN: Angelina Jolie is part of the cabal?

MOE: Look, I should probably not make generalizations about these right-wing people.

MEGAN: Also, isn't Barney a top?

MOE: Well, his whore was a bottom, but that was in 1985. I am not going to speculate, again I am not actually that interested in this topic, and like I said I am pleased to report Bill Dannemeyer has moved on as well.

MEGAN: To blaming the vicious CFR and Federal Reserve cabal.

MOE: Now he is outraged by the myths of Western medicine and agribusiness — he is a vegan pronounced veGANNE — and also the European laws against Holocaust denial.

MEGAN: So, did he vote for Bob Barr or John McCain?

MOE: And Alan Greenspan. He has been advocating a return to the gold standard for some time. IN ANY CASE, I am just telling you that California is an odd place, with a perspective permanently warped by an overabundance of beauty, sun, space, time spent in cars and optimism but nevertheless permanently changing, And I'm pretty sure he wrote in Ron Paul, for whom he had much esteem.

MEGAN: Oh, well, if you had said gold standard I would have known. If you watch enough Fox News, you see a lot of gold commercials, it's pretty humorous, though I doubt a return to the gold standard is what Nicolas Sarkozy meant when he said he wanted us to all rethink Bretton Woods.

MOE: Another happy discovery I made in the course of reporting this was Paul Kanjorski, congressman from Scranton, PA, who held onto his seat in the face of a formidable challenge from the rabidly anti-immigration mayor of Hazelton, PA last night. Kanjorski is a dead ringer for my late grandfather, who also happens to be from Scranton, although my grandfather was Irish and Kanjorski does not strike me as a particularly Irish name, but the point is none of this stuff matters and what really endeared me to the guy was his testimony on the Finance Committee, where his skepticism toward the Federal Reserve Board of Governors will surely make Bill Dannemeyer proud. But hey, this election was about other folks than old white guys.

MEGAN: Hazelton is a weird place that I drive past every time I drive home and have attempted to avoiding stopping in because of said mayor. I don't want to give him the tax revenue. So, congrats Kanjorski!

MOE: I hear Philly was totally awesome last night.

MEGAN: Hell, I heard D.C. was awesome last night, but I was too busy working and then too tired to go check it out.

MOE: Ha, I love this: McCain lost because he pandered insufficiently to the base.

MEGAN: Crazy Michelle Bachmann won, by the way, if you wanted to be bummed by something other than Prop 8 in California.

MOE: OH Jesus Christ SERIOUSLY?

MEGAN: Right, independent voters didn't vote for McCain because he wasn't right wing enough! Keep thinking that, GOP!

MOE: But no, here's my public service to you guys: McCain lost because voters changed their minds. They turn out to have them.

MEGAN: Shhh! Don't help! Let them keep thinking that the way to win independent voters is be more right-wingnutty, more against immigration, meaner, more anti-Muslim, more cutting taxes for the wealthy. Obama will need 2 terms to not be GHWB.

MOE: Also, it looks like that guy's numbers are off. Also bummed about Al Franken losing. But whatever, VIRGINIA. Not since Pocahantas had I really pegged you as a beacon of tolerance and inclusiveness.

MEGAN: I know, I almost feel like I could maybe stop apologetically telling people I'm from upstate New York now despite the fact that I've lived almost my entire adult life here (in Virginia).

MOE: Which brings us to: John McCain. Such a great speech. Such a poignant moment. Such despicable fans. I was blown away! I wonder what he was thinking looking out at all those douchebags. I was also surprised to see all his weird rage toward Obama seem to melt so thoroughly away. "Extraordinarily gracious," yes; wow.

MEGAN: I couldn't believe that either! I was watching here going, well, who the fuck wrote that speech, and, damn, am I glad that he didn't write the other ones. Because that was the 2000-era John McCain that Democrats used to swoon over. And, yeah, those people last night, like, damn. Do you have to have a political operative come out and be like, "Hey, people, the eyes of the world are upon us like they have been for the last few weeks, so could you please try showing everyone that Republicans and McCain supporters are a gracious lot?" Hell, maybe they did.

MOE: What else do we have to say? Lehman Brothers died so hope could live. Thank you Hank Paulson for the random little policy inconsistency that sealed the election. And thank you by extension Dick Fuld for being such a uniquely unsympathetic character that not even Hank Paulson your white megawealthy brother in plutocratic whiteness did not want to help you.

MEGAN: Thanks, GOP, for delivering such bad candidates (Jim Gillmore) and hate-filled campaigns (Elizabeth Dole) that even your own voters rejected your candidates. We couldn't have done it without your hubris and incompetence.

MOE: I cried. I cried the whole way up on the train. I even cried reading Vibe's idiotic "election issue" which also explains the five variables you need to choose a good Cognac, one of them being "region," which is not actually a variable if you have already decided to go drink cognac, but whatever. yes, I cried reading about Will.i.am. Yeah what the fuck, Liddy Dole?

MEGAN: Apparently, it's okay to hit below the belt if you are losing. Did you know it's the first time since the 50s that neither a Bush nor a Dole is serving in elected office? It's true!

MOE: That's insane. See, those names I guess I always equated with a sort of moderate conservatism I guess I should have equated with an entrenched and amoral power it would defend by any means at any costs

MEGAN: I don't think that those things are mutually exclusive. I think moderate conservatism is, in fact, the way to defend entrenched and amoral power.

MOE: My head hurts. Is this over? I think I need to shower. I lost my wallet again last night.

MEGAN: It's lower taxes, higher spending, foreign wars to distract the populace but not really dangerous ones that would shift the balance of power, it's keeping the government out of your lives as long as you're not gay or don't wish to use birth control or have an abortion.

MOE: Ok so THAT was fun... economic indicator time! I'm sitting in Starbucks and I had resigned myself to paying $10 for a crappy TMobile session, when it turns out they've changed Wifi partners and now AT&T is offering 2 hour blocks for $3.99, the price of a soy latte! How times change, okay, and speaking of Starbucks I think I'm going to be watching the returns in Boston with Barney Frank if anyone's interested in showing up to that. Dixville Notch will already be in bed natch! Landslide for Obama up there! Oh and did I mention that before I hit Boston I have to go to Philadelphia to cast my vote? And then the crappy AT&T Wifi service crapped out.

MEGAN: So you worked out the registration issue that got screwed up from the primaries? Good! Also, that sounds like quite the fun day of train rides, culminating with watching election returns with a seated Congressman. I will be live blogging for Jezebel. In preparation for it, last night I stopped by the grocery store and bought: 2 bottles of Guenoc Petite Sirah, one of cava, a six pack of beer and a bag of chips. I might have a friend over, or not if I don't feel like sharing. I'm already craving the salty chips.

MOE: Now I'm stealing Wifi and it is working better than the Wifi I legitimately clicked the "Terms & Conditions" box and PAID for. Yeah I called the hotline last night. They told me my polling place was at 23rd and Fitzwater!

MEGAN: Mine is around the corner, and has been for the last 5 years.

MOE: Yeah but you have to stand in line right? In Philly polling places are so small you rarely have to stand in line. It's like a few thousand Dixville Notches.

MEGAN: Well, I didn't wait in a line until 2006, when it was an hour wait in the morning and I gave up and decided to come back later but you should have seen the looks I got from people. I then managed to get caught in a deluge which caused three car accidents on the way home from work, ran into the polling place with 2 minutes to spare and there wasn't a line at all. I assume that, even though I will be voting mid-day, there will be a line. We are a swing state and all.

MOE: Hey so it turns out that the AT&T network just can't handle its traffic today. A guy came up to me and just informed me of this.

MEGAN: Great. It's like voting in a swing state, all fucked up. By the way, within the first 90 minutes of voting in Virginia, not one but two cities in Virginia were already having problems.

MOE: And we're back, on Gchat this time. Good thing I'm not voting by internet right??

MEGAN: I'm sure they'd find a way to make that even more fucked up than the system already is. And the system is pretty fucked up.

MOE: So, okay, there are many things to discuss. Many many things. And yet the whole topic feels so exhausted. Yesterday Rachel Maddow had Tim Pawlenty on her show and started grilling him about why McCain wasn't closing up the campaign by going out for Republican congressional candidates etc. etc. and you could tell even she wanted to tell herself to just give it a rest.

MEGAN: That's going to be a question a lot of Republicans start asking tomorrow, when the Dems are, at a minimum, in the high 50s in the Senate and way, way down in the House. I mean, $150,000 is a lot of radio ad time in, say, Tulsa.

MOE: Yeah, well, sure, but the Republican Party has bigger problems than that. As David Brooks captures. Contempt for government turns out to breed bad government! Which Republican Senators are losing btw? I haven't been paying attention ever since I sort of started to inherit Barney Frank's Senatitis.

MEGAN: Oh, gosh, Ted Stevens in Alaska, Liddy Dole in North Carolina and John Sununu in New Hampshire, for starters.

MOE: Right, I knew about them.

MEGAN: And then possibly Mitch McConnell, Roger Wicker, Saxby Chambliss and Norm Coleman.

MOE: I went to a Democratic dinner in NH with BF. Interestingly his favorite person in government is a longtime Dole loyalist, Sheila Bair of the FDIC. Have you written about her? There are few heroes in this financial crisis, but a wildly disproportionate number of them are heroines and she's one. (Also: Brooksley Born, Meredith Whitney, possibly Zoe Cruz.)

MEGAN: No, I have been all politics, all the time! Also, I forgot Gordon Smith in Oregon, because one generally always does. And there are 3 vacancies that the Republicans expect will be Democratic pick-ups. By the way, in case you were curious, Obama's grandmother's absentee ballot will be counted. Countdown to inappropriate Republican comment about a Chicago politician and dead people voting: T minus 2 minutes and counting.

MOE: Well I was going to say if you read one thing read this, but actually, just read that, people, it's nothing you don't sort of know about the crisis but it's horrifying nonetheless. There are parts of California where people who have been paying their mortgages for three and four years have been simultaneously watching their balances and monthly payments balloon while the values of their houses shrink to less than half their balances. It's insane. And anyone who buys, even to a teensy degree, the notion that "people without jobs were getting houses" and that's what got us here, ughhhhh.

MEGAN: Well, but, rich white people don't do things like that! The Wall Street Journal is biased! Of course it was the minorities! How can Ann Coulter be wrong??!!

MOE: What actually happened was people, in particular Hispanic people, were signing on to mortgages with such hair-raisingly exploitative terms it makes no sense in any fractionally-logical universe that anyone would extend such a loan. If not for the fact that none of the mortgage lenders actually every had to keep track of who they were lending to or whether they were paying!

MEGAN: Well, and the fact that some brokers weren't exactly good at things like "disclosure" and "layman's terms" and "honesty" and "integrity."

MOE: Yeah but forget honesty and integrity, I'm talking logical working capitalism here. I am a cynic, I am a skeptic, I sometimes call myself a Marxist, but the more I read about it the level of corruption and internal destructiveness allowed by the current system is actually astonishing.

MEGAN: Well, but ask Adam Smith, the basis of capitalism was supposed to be honesty and integrity. Without it, of course the system doesn't function. You can't have a functional market economy if it's all a zero-sum game of fucking over the other guy with every transaction, and trying to minimize the amount you get fucked over. People do business with one another assuming that they will get what they pay for, and that they will be paid. If that goes away, there's no longer an incentive to do honest business and it just devolves into chaos.

MOE: Well that's the invisible hand. Adam Smith never anticipated the credit default swap is one problem. And here's another thing: I really hate it when Republicans — notably Larry Lindsey, who I talked to the other day and is otherwise a stand-up guy — say stuff like "Don't buy stuff you don't understand…" A bigger part of this crisis — AIG — is that none of the SELLERS of this stuff understood what they were SELLING. In many cases the buyers knew better. And McCain — at the end of the day, he didn't need to pander to the base, which is what has been so sad about this. But better I suppose. It's almost as if their inane resurrection of Reagan era code words and talking points was in the cards all along, so we could sort of definitively put it all to bed. Although they are still screaming about socialism on CNBC.

MEGAN: If no one bought things they didn't understand, no one would invest their 401k's in the stock market in the first place.

MOE: What % of the Latin vote is going for Obama this time around?

MEGAN: McCain's numbers are down in the high teens, so I think 70-80 percent.

MEGAN: The Latino community isn't so keen on the Republican's "kick them all out" immigration policy.

MOE: That wasn't McCain's policy, poor guy. Too bad he couldn't remind any of them of that!

MEGAN: He could've reminded them of that, only he had to pander to the base that feels differently, so he pandered and then couldn't pivot.

MOE: Oh here's something about the strategic importance of Hispanic voters. And, not to belabor but the stock market was not the problem here. The stock market is like tic tac toe compared to the securities that caused this.

MEGAN: Well, but the point I was making was not whether stocks were the problem, it's that it was a stupid point. People buy stuff every day they don't understand.

MOE: Hispanics and youngs really got in at the tail end of this debt Ponzi. No, it's a stupid point, but it also has no validity whatsoever.

• 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]