• After barring a woman from helping her autistic sister try on clothes at the chain's Mall of America outpost, Abercrombie & Fitch was fined $115,264 for discrimination. Now we can say it definitively: Abercrombie doesn't like disabled people. [StarTrib]

• There are pictures of Threeasfour's inspiration boards, fabrics, and the in-progress pieces of its collection with Yoko Ono, which will be shown next week in New York. Ono contributed original artwork and inspiration to the collection, and the dot drawings that were transformed into original prints look fantastic with their repeated circular-organic shapes. [The Cut]
• Oprah is going to co-host next year's Met Ball. Oprah. Let that sink in. Co-hosting, of course, will be the woman who made her lose 20 pounds to be fit for the cover of her magazine: Anna Wintour. [Yahoo! News]
• This year's Met Ball model co-host, Kate Moss, stormed out of the GQ awards show in London because host James Nesbitt made a joke about her naked appearance on the cover of that magazine. She managed to interrupt Dizzee Rascal, who was being interviewed after accepting an award — twice. Once to storm out, and once to ask if anybody had seen her lipstick. [Telegraph]
• GQ anointed comedian and Little Britain star David Walliams as the most stylish man of 2009. He accepted the award wearing goggles and denim hotpants. [Mirror]
• Craig "Radioman" Schwartz, apparently some sort of serial movie set hanger-on, nearly rode his bicycle into Sarah Jessica Parker while she was filming for Sex And The City outside Bergdorf's. She stumbled over the curb. Do people really have nothing better to do than flashmob the SATC set? For the rest of the day, Parker was protected by ten bodyguards between takes. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, co-star Kristin Davis' line with Belk department stores has been discontinued, and the actress' planned New York Fashion Week show canceled. Belk and Davis say the decision was mutual. [The Cut]
• Three words: Lady Gaga Headphones. (No, she's not doing a side project with David Bazan.) [Engadget]
• The house of Ungaro has tapped Lindsay Lohan as an "artistic adviser" and relatively unknown designer Estrella Archs as its chief designer. When the Lindsay-for-Ungaro rumor started — back before the young, talented Colombian designer Esteban Cortazar had been fired — it sounded like crazy talk. Now it's happening. "Odds are it could work," says C.E.O. Mounir Moufarrige. [WWD]
• Heidi Klum, on that time Karl Lagerfeld sneered that he didn't know who she was, and that she was obviously fat anyway: "It's bizarre to me that he says he doesn't know who I am because he's dressed me in the past. I've worn Karl Lagerfeld. Not even Chanel – his line. Lagerfeld doesn't just send random things everywhere." Klum in fact wore Lagerfeld to the CFDA awards a few years back. [P6Mag — story not online yet]
  
• Fashion success story Christopher Kane, on childhood: "I was this wee kid who just stayed in the house, watching The Clothes Show with my mum and scrooging all the money from my first communion." [ToL]
• Model Crystal Renn, who was directed as a 14-year-old to lose 9" off her hips in order to work in the industry, and struggled for years with anorexia and exercise bulimia as a result, says that Glamour magazine was the only client who ever noticed her eating disorder, and took action by calling her then-agency, Next. Not that she was appreciative as a frightened young teen: "At the time, I was really embarrassed because someone had figured me out. They called it and brought it to light. I wasn't only not only not pleasing my agency but I wasn't pleasing Glamour. When I became a healthy model like I am now, they were one of the first people to shoot me at this size, and that says something." Renn, whose memoir Hungry came out yesterday, would like to have a plus-size clothing line because she says her rock 'n' roll aesthetic is under-represented in the larger sizes. [GlamChic]
• Tara Moss, who modeled for 10 years, now writes crime novels. And she does her own stunts: to research events for her books, she tries to experience the things her characters feel. In addition to spending days in morgues and courtrooms, flying fighter jets, and being set on fire, she has had an Ultimate Fighter choke her until she lost consciousness. [Reuters]
• Hadley Freeman says, of the attempts by models too numerous to name to raise awareness about the industry's working conditions, "The fact that all these efforts have come from models as opposed to the outside media (which gets too distracted with painting models as evil fem-bots and harbingers of eating disorders to see them as underpaid homesick teenagers), suggests maybe people find the idea of models making them feel fat more upsetting than the very real fact of models being raped." The serial rapist designer Anand Jon Alexander was sentenced to 59 years in prison this week; other sources interviewed for this story express amazement that any of his victims, all young models over whom he had authority, came forward at all. [Guardian]
• Anna Sui's Gossip Girl-inspired Target collection launches this weekend online and in 600 stores nationwide — and today, if you live in New York and are willing to go to a pop-up store in a townhouse on Crosby St. [WWD]
• A woman told the Post that sometimes she goes to Yigal Azrouël's Meatpacking District store to try on clothes "just to be naked in the same room with him." Azrouël is sexy and all, but that's just creepy. [NYPost]
• This story about Fashion's Night Out, which is tomorrow, includes an unexpected reference to Fitzgerald. Then Anna Wintour says, "What am I looking to buy? Something in red, some new boots, and some kind of savage fur (that's American Vogue shorthand, so you know, for a rough, shaggy stole or collar of some kind). It's not a lot, but isn't that the whole point of shopping these days." [ToL]
• Club Monaco locations in New York City will be serving champagne until 11 p.m., and the SoHo store will have a cupcake truck outside until September 12th. [FWD]
• The Financial Times' coverage of Fashion's Night Out casts Wintour as Ben Bernanke in a grand fashion stimulus plan. [FT]
• Wintour's appearance on Letterman drew slightly higher ratings than the show's average for the week and month, but ABC's Nightline still won the timeslot. [WWD]
• "Would I think twice about buying a dress that costs $2,000? Yeah! Of course I would. I'd try it on and go home and think about it before I bought it," says Victoria Beckham. Nonetheless, she says that demand for her uber-expensive dress line is outstripping supply. [People]
• Robin Givhan reports that now, the time just before Fashion Week, is a period of "soul-searching and hand-wringing" for designers and the industry. [WaPo]
• Neiman Marcus suffered a $168.6 million loss during the fourth quarter. Revenues decreased 24%. [WWD]
• Yesterday, Gap-owned e-tailer Piperlime started selling designer clothes, in addition to shoes. [NYTimes]
• Same-store sales at Laura Ashley rose 6.7%, to £101.5m. [FT]

MEGAN: It is very rare that the news is so full of crap as today, which is why I guess they call Fridays "news dumps." That said, I believe Obama's dump of his advisers' Blago contacts is best represented by this doll which portrays him taking a physical dump. I love this doll. I want one so bad that I actually mentally scrolled through everyone I had ever met — including in Spain in 1995 — to think if there was anyone I could get to buy me one.

SPENCER: Can you summarize the Blago stuff for me? I don't want to read it. Like I really don't care.

MEGAN: Rahm Emanuel called him twice pro forma and everyone is as clean as a whistle. The end. Duh.

SPENCER: I see that even this Weekly Standard writer says, "Yep, not raising any flags for me, either. Now, everybody go on vacation." So is this actually the end or will it go on endlessly like Whitewater?

MEGAN: It will go on endlessly like Whitewater, no doubt. I'm just waiting for someone's cats to disappear or Michelle Obama to be accused of faking someone's suicide. I cannot believe you are ignoring the pooping Obama doll. In other crap, Karl Rove thinks Joe Biden is trying to consolidate power too much. I mean, I just mention it because it seemed like you might need a good laugh. We can stop laughing when Joe Biden gets a man safe, a secret bunker from which he can practice his necromancy and begins to age in reverse, but until then...

SPENCER: Maybe it's because it's Christmas but I can't bring myself to care about a pooping Obama doll. Also can we stop using the word "pooping." What happened to respectable slang terms like "shitting"? "Poop" sounds like something you coo to a baby. It's not like you can't curse on this blog

MEGAN: Shit smells. This is plastic. Ergo, in my mind, it is poop. These things are very strictly delineated in my mind. Also, my parents are walking in and out of the room, so I am apparently unconsciously self-censoring like I did in high school.

SPENCER: What's beautiful about that Rove quote, aside from the hypocrisy — which is pro forma at this point — is his bald assertion that he knows what Biden and Obama talk about. Hilarious. I can't wait for this asshole's book.

MEGAN: I believe we can say "Until he shits out his book," because, man, that's going to reek.

SPENCER: Also, did you catch Jason Linkins' Twitter-meltdown last night? WTF

MEGAN: I will admit something right now that likely makes me a bad friend to Jason. I follow him online but no longer get updates to my phone since he started Twittering football.

SPENCER: Oh I took him off my phone long ago. I have a zero-tolerance policy for over-twitterers.

MEGAN: To make up for that embarrassing admission, I will post what he would have said last Friday had circumstances preventing us from doing Crappy Hour:

Since circumstance robbed us of our Friday Crappy Houring, I wasn't able to say something that I wanted, which was what a highlight of the year it was for me to participate in Crappy Hour, and to thank the jezebel community for their many kindnesses. It was a real honor and a privilege.

SPENCER: And in fairness, I think I might have been live-tweeting that particular Redskins game with him and Greg Greene and Amanda Mattos. AWWWWWW I would say the same thing, but I'm not gay. :)

MEGAN: Aw, you guys.

SPENCER: OK so now to discuss Chris Cox?

MEGAN: Oh, fuck yeah.

SPENCER:

Christopher Cox, the embattled chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is defending his restrained approach to the financial crisis, saying he has provided steady leadership as Wall Street's main regulator at a time when other federal regulators have responded precipitously to upheaval in the markets.

This is a great quote:

"What we have done in this current turmoil is stay calm, which has been our greatest contribution — not being impulsive, not changing the rules willy-nilly, but going through a very professional and orderly process that takes into account unintended consequences and gives ample notice to market participants."

Like watching every investment bank it oversees self-destruct?

MEGAN: But that's not his job!!

"The public might not understand that that wasn't the SEC's job," he said, adding that the agency was not responsible for preventing investment banks from collapsing but rather for sheltering their securities trading units from problems in the broader corporation. "The SEC is not a safety and soundness regulator," he said.

I also like this part:

Cox said the biggest mistake of his tenure was agreeing in September to an extraordinary three-week ban on short selling of financial company stocks. But in publicly acknowledging for the first time that this ban was not productive, Cox said he had been under intense pressure from Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke to take this action and did so reluctantly. They "were of the view that if we did not act and act at that instant, these financial institutions could fail as a result and there would be nothing left to save," Cox said.

Um, hey, asshole? There's a reason why you got a 5-year term instead of a political appointment: so you wouldn't cave to political pressure to do stuff you know if bad.

SPENCER: No one can resist Hank Paulson. That's how you got those hickeys. What would Dennis Prager say?

MEGAN: Dennis Prager would say that Chrissy Cox should just lie down and spread her legs even if she's not in the mood! Which is apparently what Cox did!

It became the agency's responsibility to monitor them for financial and operational weaknesses under a program set up before Cox's tenure, but under his watch they got into such trouble that today they no longer exist as investment banks. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers failed, Merrill Lynch had to be taken over, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley converted themselves into bank holding companies.

The March collapse of Bear Stearns illustrated an array of agency shortcomings, according to a review by the SEC's inspector general. He concluded that agency officials had been aware of "numerous potential red flags" at Bear Stearns "but did not take actions to limit these risk factors."

"It is undisputable," the inspector general concluded, that the "program failed to carry out its mission in its oversight of Bear Stearns."

SPENCER: That's how Cox thought the country needed to show the markets it loved them

MEGAN: I mean, the problem is that Cox was kind of a slut, he'd just spread 'em for anyone.

Treasury and Fed officials viewed Cox and his staff as nonplayers who had failed to foresee the brewing problems, according to people who were involved in those efforts but spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. They said Cox was often brought in for consultation only after major decisions had been made by Treasury and Fed officials.

Let's just say it: Bush nominated a random conservative Congressman from New Jersey to head the SEC because he didn't want anyone there who was particularly smart, engaged, knowledgeable or into regulating jackshit, and Cox fit the bill because he was a reflexive deregulator. And would get confirmed easily because Congress rarely fails to confirm its own.

SPENCER: Since I am not qualified to talk about what actually happened in the financial crisis I want to remind everyone that Chris Cox has been a conservative darling forever. Here's the American Spectator on who should be McCain's running mate:

Chris Cox: The best choice, bar none. This thoughtful and reform-minded chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission made his name for 16 years as the brainiest and perhaps most principled Reaganite conservative in Congress, as well as one of the best on TV.

MEGAN: I needed a good laugh, thanks. "Reform-minded," meaning, "let's get government out of the way of the markets so they can run the universe and make everything sunshine and rainbows!!"

SPENCER: Here's another such column. And here's Lisa Schiffren of NRO who needs no Prageresque advice when it comes to Cox:

Chris Cox is fabulous. He should be president. The only negative — alas, a big one — is that he has never managed to generate real excitement, even when running what should have been sexy hearings on big issues. He is obviously very smart, and a true policy wonk — the sort of guy who usually runs big, serious, difficult government institutions or departments. Is he a vote getter?

So at least that's fairminded!

MEGAN: "Sexy hearings on big issues?" Because the American public loves a wonk, and particularly the Republican American public. The last eight years have completely proved that. Speaking of, the red states are about to get more Congress members in 2011. California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Florida and Pennsylvania are gonna lose. Which means: vote in your state elections next year and in 2010!!

SPENCER: Oh beautiful. This will bolster the arguments of all conservatives who don't see themselves leading the GOP into regional-party marginality to push the party rightward. And here I was thinking Afghanistan will doom the Obama administration.

MEGAN: And I was all excited that a judge ordered the release of 4 Gitmo detainees and The Europeans might be willing to accept some Gitmo detainees in resettlements deals. But we should end on a high note. Of the people Bush pardoned for Christmas, one was Charlie Winters, posthumously.

Mr. Winters was among a group of several hundred Americans and Canadians referred to by the Israelis by the Hebrew acronym of “machal,” or “volunteers from outside Israel.” They secretly helped in Israel’s war of independence in 1948, a year after its creation as a Jewish state.

He was an Irish-Catholic from Boston, and never said a word about it to his son. He was also the only one who did any prison time for it.

SPENCER: Yeah I have to give Bush credit for that. Dayenu. What a merry Jewish Christmas.

A very heartfelt thanks to Esquire's James Folta for the news (and picture) of the squatting Obama doll

MEGAN: I am sitting here watching CNBC and drinking coffee, which I don't normally do. By the way, the economy: still fucked.

LATOYA: Lucky you — I'm already in the office. I know the economy is still fucked — why do you think I'm here? I think we need to chill for the long haul on this one. It's gonna be a while, new stimulus package or no.

MEGAN: I love, by the way, that John McCain is all like, "Obama just wants to throw money at problems like education and special needs kids!" and in the meantime, he's all Mr. New Spending. And Republicans are shoveling money at the market faster than they shovel bullshit at the American people.

LATOYA: Yeah, some free market this is. I didn't know some people got a string to pull if you fucked up. Looks like Bernake's ProBama.

MEGAN: This is what happens when you tell reporters that the economy isn't your strong suit and the economy goes to shit. Also, insulting your opponent by calling him a Socialist while the government is busy nationalizing entire industries and you're calling for the government to, in effect, buy the mortgage rights to have the country is not good either. Bob Schieffer knows that most Republicans are privately Pro-bama these days, they're just too scared to say. It's just the mouth-breathers who don't actually have to, like, work in the government that are all like JOHN AND SARAH OH MY GOD I LOVE THEM SO.

LATOYA: Details, Megan, Details Is it just me that's hoping for a reverse Bradley effect?

MEGAN: If I prayed, I'd pray for one.

LATOYA: Don't waste your prayer on that. The specter of election '00 still haunts us.

MEGAN: Well, I mean, She's supposedly omnipotent, right?

LATOYA: If this comes down to the Supreme Court, I want everyone on this: protest, prayers, fertility dances. I don't give a damn what you do, do it in the Obama direction.

MEGAN: I'm up for a fertility dance, even if it means I have to be celibate for a month.

LATOYA: Nah, you have to stick with the prayers. We have to counteract the scared evangelicals.

MEGAN: Awww, poor babies, once they've denounced him, called him godless, passed around rumors that he's a Muslim and campaigned against him, they're worried he won't talk to them about their conservative, intolerant social agenda? Color me sad.

LATOYA: It's only unfair when you're losing. I'm just concerned they'll call up the ghost of Jerry Falwell.

MEGAN: Oh, right. I mean, it's his duty to represent all the people in the United States, sort of like it was George Bush's duty.

LATOYA: Define "people". Obviously, some of us who aren't here yet count more than those of us who are here, so maybe they just are counting most of us heathens.

MEGAN: Well, I think that by "people" they mean "those of them that are saved" and so that's anything that's in our uteri, and (white) evangelicals. Other than that, um, oh, wait, I think Bush had Chalabi's back for a while when he went to invade Iraq.

LATOYA: Then again, maybe it isn't the extreme set that we should be worried about. Someone shot a bear cub in the head and dropped some Obama campaign tags over its dead body. Now, there are multiple layers of fucked up in that mix and the story doesn't have many details yet. But that is just sick and disgusting.

MEGAN: Also, I think we need an alibi for Sarah Palin. She was just in North Carolina.

LATOYA: Ha — you can handle that. I'm watching how Obama is leaving the campaign trail to visit his sick grandma. It's the little things that get to me in this election, it really is.

MEGAN: I mean, if they sent her home from the hospital last week, and she's that ill, she's probably in hospice care.

LATOYA: Perhaps. I hope she gets well.

MEGAN: I hope for his sake that he gets there in time, and that he's taking Sasha and Malia.

LATOYA: See, I can't even read a sweet story like that without getting pissed. On one hand you have a family man, someone in a partnership with his wife, a thinking politician, someone who has seen the best and worst of America and wants to serve us anyway...

MEGAN: I mean, his spokesman all but said she's not going to get better. It sucks that she won't get to vote for her grandson. And it probably sucks more that if she votes absentee, some Republican will probably object.

LATOYA: Sigh. Moving on. Oh, did you hear? We apparently hate real Americans. Because obviously, we are fake Americans. This isn't news to me — we talk about how PoC are marginalized in America all day every day at my spot — but I thought you would want to know.

MEGAN: Well, that's good to know, at least. If I'm disenfranchised at the polls in two weeks, at least I'll know why. So, am I to assume there's a new God test for citizenship? Do I have to swear fealty to a particular brand of God to vote? Are they going to make me submit to a lie detector to make sure I really believe in God?

LATOYA: Oh, it gets better:

Warming up a crowd in North Carolina Saturday, Republican Rep. Robin Hayes offered the diagnosis that “liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.”

His remarks came shortly after he had said he would “make sure we don’t say something stupid, make sure we don’t say something we don’t mean.”

Hayes had followed Rep. Patrick McHenry, also a North Carolina Republican, who laid out the choice between McCain and Obama.

“It’s like black and white,” yelled someone from the crowd.

You just can't make this shit up. You really can't.

MEGAN: I love how that shit is a) not stupid and b) not something he doesn't mean. Really, can we just pick somewhere for them all to go on November 6th?

LATOYA: Mars?

MEGAN: Perfect! And since it takes 3 years to get there, they won't be back until 2014. I think that's a good plan.

LATOYA: We should tell them real Americans set up camp on Mars.

MEGAN: No, we should tell them that God has called them to journey there, just like God called Moses to lead the Jews out of Egypt. Charlton Heston already left! Outer space is the new desert.

LATOYA: It so is. Mars is red, the Red Sea — we could totally sell this. This is shaping up to be a tough week for McCain. He's running out of cash (down to $47 million!) and he's breaking up with Colin Powell.

MEGAN: I'm actually surprised he has $47 million left when he only had $84 to start. But, then I read about Meg Whitman giving almost $100,000 despite donation "limits" that McCain's supposed campaign finance reform put into place and I'm not that surprised anymore.

LATOYA: I would say something about saving and fiscal responsibility, but it just looks like creative loopholing. I find it interesting that McCain is shocked Colin Powell didn't call.

MEGAN: I mean, why does no one but me point out that McCain wrote the loopholes?

LATOYA: Makes sense though. That's how he knows what to use. I'm still on the McCain/Powell break up. Maybe Powell didn't feel like being called Judas. That title was already flexed on Gov. Richardson. Or maybe Sarah drove a rift in their relationship. Hmmm...

MEGAN: Given how leaky McCain's organization is — as evidenced by no less than 3 staffers telling CNN they're giving up on Colorado — I'm not totally surprised. Plus, when do you think the last time was that McCain called him up? With all the whispers for weeks that Powell was thinking about breaking it off, why wouldn't John call him and be like, Colin, baby, I'm sorry, I've been really busy, let me buy you a drink when this is all over...? Especially since they weren't in an exclusive relationship.

LATOYA: Does Colin Powell have a Facebook page? Maybe John should have checked their status. Telephone is so pre-2000. Maybe Colin sent him a "TTYL" and he just stopped paying attention. I guess after 25 years, the thrill is gone. It's the end of a bromance. We should send him a CD. Or at least email Meghan McCain, have her post "How Come You Don't Call Me" in his honor

MEGAN: Powell's all about "You Don't Own Me."

LATOYA: LOL — "Don't tell me what to say!"

MEGAN: "Don't say I can't go with other boys!"

LATOYA: "Just let me be myself...that's all I ask of you!"

MEGAN: In my head, Colin Powell is, crying, singing this into his hairbrush like Bridget Jones, slightly drunk.

LATOYA: "I'm free — and I love to be free!" See, now that's going to be stuck in my head all day!

MEGAN: I'm a terrible person, I apologize.

• 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]

Image via the riveting YouTube productionCuttin' Crocs

MOE: Yooooo.
MEGAN: Hey, I am just sitting here contemplating how freakishly tan Joe Scarborough has gotten. I hope he has a good dermatologist.
MOE: I'm sure Charlie Crist has a recommendation!
MEGAN: Charlie Crist totally fake bakes. And/or does a spray-on tan. But now that he's totally getting married, I'm sure his wife will be running her hands all over his naked body regularly so she'll notice any changes in his moles
MEGAN: (I crack myself up sometimes)
MOE: Oh Jesus Christ, seriously?
MOE: (LOL)
MEGAN: I know, dude, wtf? I bet he's still mad at Scarborough for constantly mocking his ugly sweater, though.

“I thought that Fox’s coverage during the primary was comprehensive and fair and evenhanded,” Mr. Wolfson said Monday in a telephone interview from Liverpool, England, where he was vacationing. “It’s a huge audience, and it is important to have a strong, progressive voice on the network.”

MOE: Drudge, naturally, is so excited by this news his headline currently reads "HILLARY OPS: FOX NEWS FAIREST"
MEGAN: I love how, like, a year ago, Kos and that crowd were like "NO DEBATES ON FOX NEWS ARGH" and Clinton totally backed out and now her communications guy is fucking joining the network.
MOE: Speaking of, did you read the Carr piece recapping Fox's long history of, uhhh, "comprehensiveness"? To me their alteration of Jacques Steinberg looks less like Nazi propaganda than your basic Mr. Potatohead Garbage Pail antics. Do you think by "evenhanded" Wolfson meant "you have to credit them with keeping his features relatively symmetrical"?
MEGAN: I was totally wondering when someone was going to point that out about the alterations to the picture, because it's actually the first thing I thought when I saw them — like, um, does anyone else notice the anti-Semetic undertones of this? But being a card-carrying, weak-chinned, blonde-haired Anglo-Saxon-verging-on-Aryan type, I didn't feel qualified to point that out but now I do and so I say to Faux News: What the fuck, sirs? Please fire your Photoshop guy.
MEGAN: Also, even though I mentioned it last night, I feel like we should talk briefly about Webb dropping out.
MEGAN: Like, apparently there's hints it's some sort of skeleton? I mean, the man's a former Republican, former Reagan official whose written smutty books has a bunch of kids with 3 different wives... there's more??
MOE: Um, given what we know, is there any reason to believe there's not? Or do you think the reformed Hillary camp had something to do with it?
MEGAN: Ooh, that be some sort of awesome intrigue, wouldn't it? Because the HuffPo story just quotes an anonymous Democratic source that he dropped out after receiving the camp's veting documents to fill out, but that could totally be a Clinton smear job. In which case, Clintonistas,brava! Well done. Just don't do so much of that that George Allen can beat him, mmkay?
MOE:

A Democrat close to Webb confirms that a request for documents preceded his declaration to the Obama campaign. The Democrat said that Webb did not want to relive the vigors of a campaign so soon after his election to the Senate.

He keeps harping on that.
MEGAN: Which itself is kind of a shit thing to say about not running when the guy whose asking you wasn't elected that much before you, actually.
MEGAN: *who's asking you.
MEGAN: Also, I'm just going to put this out there, even if it's not true, this tale of homoerotic wrestling hilarity in the Deep South had better end up in Bruno.
MEGAN:

The audience, as well as local fighters drawn to take part in the show, became enraged. "It set the crowd off lobbing beers," Holland said. "They had beers in plastic cups. Those things can get some distance on them actually."

MOE: OMG did you cover Bruno's fooling of the ex-Mossad agent? Because that = why I read Drudge. There's a lot of Bernanke shit today because of the speech he's giving but I'm not sure I care to address it. Also: I am hungover physically and metaphysically. But I got new meds yesterday so I should probably take one.
MEGAN: I did see the Mossad thing, but because it's Drudge, I sort of ignored. Also, I thought we should mention the fact that Congressman Waxman is scheming to find a way to make Karl Rove's position illegal forever more.
MOE: You know what sucks? When Safari decides to make its Java stop working, and then you're forced to use Firefox, which uses like 100x the ram. Also, did you blog McCain's endorsement of Crocs? I love it when free-marketeers hold up pointless little companies that feed off nothing beyond America's neverending ability to buy into stupid fads as these inspiring success stories that invariably started with two guys and a "great idea." Yeah, plastic shoes, great fucking idea. But anyway, as much as I love that I had nooooo idea what a cringe-inducing public speaker McCain could be, not that I should talk.
MEGAN: The first big speech I ever gave to 200 people (including my boss), I was running 102 fever, I kept running out of the conference room to vomit, I burst capillaries around my eyes and only barely avoided puking on the podium. I've gotten better.
MEGAN: Anyway, I also know the answer to Crocs — not that this is AT ALL surprising, but the founder is a big conservative donor type..
MOE: I have to say, I don't often give them credit, but it looks like Access Hollywood nailed a powerful scoop here.
MEGAN: Also, he doesn't like shopping, he's one of those dudes who likes to walk in and just buy stuff. He's a real guy! Watch him drink beer! Watch him uncomfortably hold Michelle's purse.
MEGAN: Actually, this makes me want to tell a funny story about my dad.
MEGAN: When I was in high school, I needed some new bras, and my dad had a credit card and the availability. We went to Sears. As I'm walking around browsing, my dad's stuck in the middle of the bra department trying not to look anywhere, so he's focused on the sign above one of the racks, which says "underwire" in cursive over a picture of water. My dad says in the typical Carpentier-lacking-volume-control-voice, "What do you need an underwater bra for?"
MEGAN: The sales lady, on her way to rescue both of us had to leave the department she was laughing so hard and sit in the shoe section.
MOE: Um that is AWESOME. My dad would never in a million fucking years go near a bra. In fact, I don't even think I have ever heard him say the word bra. In fact my dad forgoes no opportunity to tell me my "cleavage" is showing, when you and I both know "my cleavage"…well there is no such thing.
MEGAN: I used to take my dad bra-shopping as revenge for all the embarrassment he caused me. It's oneupsmanship on embarrassment in my household, this is why it is really hard to embarrass me and why I do it to other people all the time. And your cleavage is fine but if you would like to trade, I would be happy to do so.
MOE: This is going to shock you, but I'm somewhat occupied with a certain comments thread right now.
MEGAN: Gosh, you think? Might as well let everyone get back to that one if they want.
MOE: My friend Marcus is in the news. He's the new executive editor of the Washington Post! This signals a "generational change." He was in Obama's class at Columbia! And used to co-own a nightclub in Shanghai. I'm hoping he won't be too disturbed by my conduct to give me a job moving his stuff.
MEGAN: Oooh, can he open a good club in D.C.?

• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed thinks the courtroom artist drew his nose too wide. He lost a bunch of weight on the Guantanamo diet and totally turns out to be one of those secretly vain terror masterminds. [USA Today]
• This will shock you: Bob Dylan is voting for Barack Obama. Okay, I was kidding about the shocked part. [Times]
• There was this whole movement afoot to strongarm Barry into picking Hillary over some of his other bros but I think Hillary took a step back and said, "You know, this is bullshit, I don't care anymore, if he wants me he wants me," and although the hardest part about doing that is always the realization that he's probably gonna be all "It ain't me babe," I'm glad she did that. [NY Times]
• You just have to accept that in the Catholic Church shit takes awhile, and that if a priest is accused of pedophilia it might take a few years or even decades to remove him. Now, if he mocks Hillary Clinton and it ends up on YouTube, on the other hand, now that is when you gotta sever all ties right away. [Chicago Tribune] [The Root]
• Well this is a new one: alcohol cutting your risk of arthritis. I pretty much always thought gout was arthritis, and that you get that from wine, so this is pretty awesome news, not that I would even notice I had arthritis what with the shakes and whatnot. [BBC]

• What drives the economy and technological innovation and stuff? In some countries it's known "industrial policy." But in this country since the Cold War it's pretty much been porn, so I don't know what this guy is talking about. [Miller-McCune]
• The recession has driven Saks shoppers to Nordstrom, American Eagle shoppers to Aeropostale and everyone else to BJ's and Costco. [WSJ]
• Black people think Obama needs to remember the Sisterhood. This is not a particularly revolutionary essay but I'm linking to it because I read through it the whole way. [The Root]
• The other day I got an IM from my friend. "Could Lehman seriously become the next Bear Stearns just based on fear that it's the next Bear Stearns?" she asked. "Yup," I replied, and told the fear and greed aphorism. But apparently $60 billion worth of "tough to value" securities is another big reason. [Economist]
• Anyway, the big problem is there's a lot of greed, and not enough fear. Let me explain: we are the Fed, and bankers are dudes. We control the population supply, which seems like a pretty powerful position, but they have more time on their hands and thus much more elaborate ways of fucking with us to the point where we're basically their bitch. Anyway, this is called "moral hazard", which is almost as good a name for an okay first novel as The Undatable. [Economist] [WSJ]
• I'm thinking of changing the name of this feature, to something like "Narrow Thoughts" or "Profundities" or something. Deep thoughts, anyone?
• There is probably something totally awesome and life-affirming about being able to scale skyscrapers but, like…nah, I can't really see the point. [NYT]
• Oh yeah and you fucking dykes have sent me some pretty little sums to help get those feminists out of Basra! Why did I never wait tables on bitches like you? That's right, because we were all waiting tables together.

• "He's obviously a well-educated, sincere man who has done good work in building Trinity United Church of Christ. But, to borrow a phrase that Wright might have used in one of his sermons, his rant at the Press Club demonstrates, that he is also a damn fool." [TheRoot]
  
• Surely I wasn't the only one who detected some philosophical ideological undertones to the Lauren Conrad-Heidi Montag feud, but both actually turn out to support bombing Iran. [NY Mag]
  
• Perhaps because Iran recently condemned Barbie dolls. [NYT]
  
• The Fed's bailout of Bear Stearns is the "worst policy mistake of the generation." Well, I mean, we pointed that out already, but when a former Fed head of monetary affairs says so it's apparently "news." [WSJ]
  
• It was a real delusion. It was like [former New York Gov. Eliot] Spitzer: "I am doing something dangerous, but because of who I am, and how smart I am, it is not going to come back to haunt me." -89-year-old financial manager and historian Peter Bernstein. [WSJ]
  
• And now we've got 18.6 million vacant homes on our hands! [Wonkette]

• Congratulations, Daniel Pipes. What a marvelous job you've done fearmongering and mobilizing public sentiment against a champion of pluralism and cultural understanding. I am sooooo glad we have you around to prevent our children from learning foreign languages. [NYT]
• An elite Korean boarding school recently turned off the surveillance cameras it was using to ensure students didn't fall asleep during late-night study sessions. [NYT]
• Two North Korean refugees in South Korea poured paint thinner on themselves and tried to set themselves on fire at the Olympic torch relay on Sunday to draw attention to China's inhumane policy of sending North Korean refugees like themselves back to North Korea, and Chinese students threw rocks and bottles and pipes at them in retaliation. [NYT]
• And speaking of the Democratic People's Republic a a 28-year-old military officer just defected to the South. [ NYT]
• An express train derailed and crashed just southeast of Beijing, killing 70 people. [NYT]

Tiffany reported "same-store sales" growth of 1% nationwide — boosted by a 10% windfall at its New York store, driven entirely, I daresay, by tourists harnessing the pitiful value of the dollar, not that anyone on CNBC is saying so. No, they are all asking one another what it really means. Could the American consumer be more "confident" than recent surveys have suggested? Could it suggest that the masses are paying no mind to all this crazy recession talk and spending their stimulus checks in advance on their mid-tier "aspirational" luxury brands? Will they save the American economy yet again? It doesn't matter, really; talk like this is just a salve to a jittery market, the sort of salve that will keep greater fools — such as, say, the US government — pumping the stock market full of dollars that will keep the whole thing sufficiently afloat that enough will trickle down that blah blah blah "soft landing." The difference between recession and its absence is, after all, just a trickle. It is manipulable, to understate. But we buy into it, in the same stupid irrational way we buy into the Tiffany "brand."

Look, the more our population grows the more GDP grows. Other countries understand this. Japan, for instance, has spent practically the past twenty years with the financial community moaning about its stubborn inability to lift itself out of recession, but in actuality, it turns out, as GDP per capita goes, the country has been faring a lot better than us, because we've pumped our numbers by welcoming new people all the time to tend to our chicken coops and tend to the thankless drudgery of engineering class. We've pumped them in countless other ways, as well, from devising elaborate schemes to sell and trade and resell the same old crap — mortages, sex, sterling silver — in more appealing packaging. In stubbornly clinging to nothing but that aggregate number we have fostered a dynamism that has America great, but it has also made a lot of us miserable and stupid. Miserable and stupid and also, I should point out, confused as to the exact source of our misery.

All of which is a complex and long-winded introduction to a story I wanted you all to read about Bhutan, a country that has appointed a man to oversee something called Gross National Happiness. Bhutan is the type of poor, Third World country no one really holds up as a model of anything, which is why no one who matters would probably care that they take their national happiness so seriously, except for the fact that their GDP is actually growing about 7% annually, which is on par with India.

About one quarter of the country lives below the poverty line, and an expanding population of young people are in search of jobs, says Mr. Tshitseem. "We must keep up with the aspirations of our children," he says. But he says fast growth should also not usher in a consumerist invasion that affects the national mood.
The Center for Bhutan Studies, a local think tank, has been devising a way to quantify that mood. It is developing a GNH index based on extensive public surveys. Researchers have fanned out across the country, interviewing more than 1,000 households, according to Karma Ura, head of the center. The sample size is considered large in a country with only 750,000 people and not a single traffic light.

Outside the government high school in Thimphu, 29-year-old researcher Karma Wangdi recently interviewed Bhanaan Humagai, a 16-year-old high school student.
Question: On a scale of 10, how happy are you?
Answer: 8
Question: How stressed are you?
Answer: Somewhat stressed. I am studying for exams.
Question: Have you ever thought of suicide?
Answer: No! (laughs).

Tiffany Net Falls, But Outlook Brighter [WSJ]
Smile Census: Bhutan Counts Its Blessings [WSJ]
Grossly Distorted Picture [Economist]
What Created This Monster? [NY Times]

Today the Federal Reserve, hot on the heels of saving Wall Street, elected to cut interest rates once again, by 75 basis points. And while the stock market had a screaming orgasm over this, I did not personally think it was such a great move. Herewith, a dissenting opinion.

And by "us," I mean Bear Stearns, because I personally have weighed the odds and I'm pretty sure I personally have nothing at stake here, no matter what you do, Ben Bernanke. My balance sheet, while admittedly lacking much in the way of assets, is also blissfully insensitive to short-term market and/or interest rate fluctuations.

Thanks to my industry, indeed, my own financial situation has been governed by a recessionary state of constant layoffs and downsizing for years and years — and I'm lucky enough to have one of those jobs they haven't figured out how to do better in Hyberabad. And I'll let you in on something, Ben Bernanke; my finances have zero correlation with those of the stock market. I'm not alone in this; most Americans are actually earning less than they were in real terms than they were in 1999. They can handle a few quarters of recession because they've been handling it.

Some of my morning commenters would have me believe bailing out JP Morgan is the only way to minimize "collateral damage on Wall Street and thus the economy," but really, whose economy are we talking about here? The buying power of the minimum wage employee is at a 51-year-low.

So fuck the Street, Ben Bernanke; just this once, just for, like, a quarter or something. You don't have to play rough; I'm not asking you to nationalize any industries or institute land reform or anything, just give them a little scare. They chose this path, you know. They chose to worship Ayn Rand and wear those Paul Smith shirts and pay zero money down on their Hamptons summer homes and obnoxiously, whenever confronted by someone like myself at a bar, claim that the Market Solves Everything. Let the market solve this one for them. People are eating dirt for dinner in Haiti, Ben Bernanke; you can let Bear Stearns go to bankruptcy court.

Sure, some financial institutions might get pissed for a minute. They didn't lend Bear Stearns all that money to leverage the shit out of their delusional bets that the housing market would keep going up up up only to spend years in bankruptcy court for the sake of reaping fifty or sixty cents on the dollar. But you know what? They probably also lent money to Goldman Sachs and Jeff Greene and John Paulson to leverage the shit out of the lucky hedge funds that bet it would all end in failure. They lent money to all those short-sellers who bet the price of Bear Stearns stock from $67 all the way down to $2. Sure, that's what makes our economy so "dynamic", Ben, but does that make it any more virtuous than a legalized Ponzi scheme?

What if there were some sort of cascading ripple effect? everyone wants to know. What of all that IRRATIONAL FEAR? But you just tell them, Ben Bernanke, that they should maybe sit quietly in their illiquid asses and reflect on what the fuck made them think it was rational to buy into all this fancy housing market bullshit in the first place. Just ask them, Ben Bernanke, what they thought was rational about people in Southern California taking out mortgages with monthly payments equivalent to five months' rent?

Because the housing market never made much sense to me, Ben Bernanke. I mean, there we were a couple years ago, with a war on, a slowing economy, oil roaring up toward $100 a gallon or whatever, skyrocketing energy prices sending other commodity prices through the roof... just where were the buyers who were supposed to keep bidding up those houses so everyone could continue pumping the economy with home equity loans? I'll tell you where a lot of them are now: sitting at home, watching network TV and avoiding opening their mail. Sort of like Bear Stearns with that portfolio of mortgages, mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities no one wants to put a value on just yet.

But you know? Eventually they'll open the envelopes, see what they've got, realize it's probably not the end of the world and start moving money around again. Assets are only "illiquid" till someone — the market? — figures out how to make them liquid again!

And if it is the end of the world, there's always the hope of an early death a la Ken Lay. Right?

MOE: Hey hi what's up shit is pretty fucked huh.
MEGAN: It makes me a little glad I never leave my house. Hooray for blogoraphobia.
MOE: Okay, first things first: there are violent protests in Tibet, and China has to quell them in a way that doesn't make Stephen Spielberg look good, and now the protests have spread to other provinces.
Tibet has long been a pretty sweet separatist province to have, what with the exiled leader advocating nonviolence and spending most of his time with Beastie Boys etc. etc.
MEGAN: And getting to meet practically every head of state in the world, albeit unofficially...
Except for, obviously, those countries in Africa rapidly becoming Chinese client states.
MOE: China has a whole other separatist province called Xinjiang and no one pays attention to those guys. Because they're angry Muslims. Hey Sudanese Islamofascists? How's about some CONSISTENCY??
MEGAN: Wait, didn't we care about that for like 2 seconds last week when Al Qaeda did a video of training there? I didn't realize that we'd forgotten to care about that.
MOE: Hey, look, a story about a recent thwarted hijacking attempt by a Uighur Al Qaeda girlbomber! I think the Chinese government thinks you should care again.
MEGAN: Oh, thanks nameless Chinese propagandists newswriters!
Anyway, so, how soon until they start beating monks in the streets and we issue some sort of vague milquetoast protest about it that in no way compares to our reaction to the monk beatings in Myanmar? Or did I blink and miss it?
MOE: Oooooh, think Laura Bush drop her cookie sheet again and get on the phone with Hu Jintao?
MEGAN: Maybe she could send him cookies? I'll bet some chocolate chip ones could go a long way toward repairing US-China relations
MOE: I
Yikes, that disappeared.
MOE: Okay yeah so, it's very tricky what is happening with Tibet, but either way, it led to an incredibly cerebral discussion of Bjork on the comments over the weekend, did you see? My father was impressed with Bjork's timing on that one, but perhaps if he knew Bjork's tears cure cancer (too bad she never cries) he wouldn't be so surprised. Interestingly, this week Taiwan is holding elections, and he's headed out there. Taiwan is interesting because, you know, they really have it best, as "splittist" provinces go. Elections, democracy, a decent standard of living, no painful shared history of, like, cannibalism or Cultural Revolution or any such thing. The pro-China Kuomintang party is supposed to win though.
MEGAN: Interesting. Wait, now, Taiwan's pro-China even though China considers them a rogue provice? Taiwanese politics are so hard to understand. Is it possible that China's financing the Kuomintang or something
MOE: hahahaha well China's financing the entire economy, sort of like ours. The thing is that the Kuomintang came from mainland China and fled to Taiwan, with numerous palace treasures and such, in 1949. There they found a happy population of ethnic Chinese who spoke another dialect and also, Japanese because the Japanese colonized it, and proceeded to pretty much subjugate them until the seventies, when a democracy movement began burgeoning and our relations with the mainland made it a lot easier for Jimmy Carter to pressure the Kuomintang to treat the "ethnic Taiwanese" better. Somewhere in there Chiang Kai-shek died, his much nicer son Chiang Chingguo took over, and a kind of slow, steady democratization took hold. The thing is that most Chinese, no matter what dialect they speak, are pretty pragmatic and rational and no one wants war with China, but while they have us around a lot of them also don't feel like taking shit from China. On the other hand, of course, Taiwanese control most of the factories in China. It's complicated.
MEGAN: [Awkward segue alert] As complicated at Dina Mattos McGreevey's sex life?
MOE: Hey, good call. That conversation was certainly venturing into prurient and meaningless territory so I'm glad we can now focus our attention on The McGreevey-driver threesomes. I think my favorite part is that they were described as "intense" "hard-core consensual sex orgies".That sounds so...cardio! It's a good thing too I guess if they all started with get-togethers at T.G.I.Fridays.
MEGAN: Like, taking a date to TGI Fridays is so Jersey and let us not pretend that it is not because it is. Also, their intense 3-way orgies (which, can an orgy really only involve 3 people?) always involved one of the guys jacking off while one of them fucked Dina.
But what's sort of really interesting to me is that in earlier publications, he's said not to have started working for McGreevey until 2000, which throws off his timeline I think, and that Dina's divorce lawyer wants financial records about financial records and correspondence with McGreevey's rich boyfriend. Also, apparently, they're due in court soon to litigate over the money McGreevey is hiding from Matos so that he doesn't have to pay as much in child support and alimony. Fucker. Like, aren't gay men supposed to be the good ones?
MOE: Um yeah they shared a room at the TRUMP PLAZA in Atlantic City. Here is what I have to say about that; okay, there is a hotel room shortage in Atlantic City, sure. But if if you are the governor you get the "casino" rate and that is seventy bucks. "It became almost laughable — I would never have my own hotel room," Pedersen said. Okay, so a few things: what does this mean about Silda Spitzer? How long has the New York Post been sitting on this story just waiting for everyone to remember that they once for a brief moment cared about Dina Matos McGreevey?
MEGAN: I'm personally hoping that Silda's sunning herself on a beach somewhere foreign and being served tropical alcoholic beverages by inappropriately young but attractive cabana boys.
And that she and Eliot didn't fuck around with 3rd parties because it's one thing imagining Gay McGreevey jerking off and another entirely grosser thing to have to picture Eliot Spitzer in a wide variety of sexual situations
Excuse my while I go wash my brain out with bleach. Maybe you could talk about the financial markets and i'll try to think of something to say that makes it sound like my summer interning for the Bank of New York wasn't a complete waste of time for everyone involved?
MOE: Okay, well, the government is going to have to print money to bail out the banks because they made the financial instruments so complicated no one has a fucking clue how much, if anything, they're worth, and everything is so interconnected that it could all collapse like in the Asian Financial Crisis unless the Fed steps in and offers a quarter trillion dollars to save it. Or something.
Here it is explained by someone named Dave Wilson who is on some email list that my ex-boyfriend is on.

There's currently a kind of cascade failure happening throughout the financial community, spurred
both by extraordinary levels of borrowed money that was used to speculate (it's like those mortgages that were issued for 110% of the value of the house, except that type of "investment" has, unbeknownst to most people, actually been taking place in pretty much every investment sphere you can think of); if those speculative investments go South, investors have to come up with lots of cash, fast, (this is known as a margin call) meaning they wind up selling everything they own to raise cash, which then depresses the value of the stuff the investors had to sell (as well as similar stuff owned by others) since suddenly there's a lack of scarcity combined with a suspicion on the part of would-be buyers that perhaps this stuff is being dumped for reasons other than a need for quick cash...

Last fall, the former Treasury secretary confessed to Fortune magazine that until the mortgage storms broke over his head in the summer of 2007, he was unfamiliar with the kinds of complex mortgage structures with which Citi's own balance sheet was packed. Almost certainly, the gulf between competence and compensation on Wall Street has never been wider.

"Why not set an example of Bear Stearns, the guys who have this record of dog-eat-dog, we're brass knuckles, we're tough?" asked William A. Fleckenstein, president of Fleckenstein Capital in Issaquah, Wash., and co-author with Fred Sheehan of "Greenspan's Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve." "This is the perfect time to set an example, but they are not interested in setting an example. We are Bailout Nation."

• The New York Post endorses Barack Obama — for the primary. [NY Post]
  
• Snoop Dogg and onetime ANTM contestant Kelle Jacob, meanwhile, remain undecided.
  
• From the tip jar: "FYI...I know why Paul Rudd wasn't at his crappy movie premiere last night...though I don't have any photographic evidence (yet!), I saw him with my own eyes at the Obama rally in Kansas City! He is shorter in person then one would expect..."
  
• "My advice: Make sure that your personal and tax records are secure. Also, get a shredder, and use it... Never assume your home is a safe haven" That's Kathleen Willey, offering her own form of support to Barack Obama. [ABC News]
  
• New polls say McCain would beat Obama or Hillary in a general election, though that is only slightly more meaningful than those polls that were saying the same thing about Rudy a few months back. You remember, when McCain's campaign was totally bankrupt/moribund/etc. [Rasmussen]
  
• Jesus Christ another rate cut? [Wash Post]
  
• On Meghan McCain's playlist right now: "It's A Shame About Ray." Less so about Rudy, eh? [McCain Blogette]

• Interested in McCain's abortion record? [Ontheissues.org]
• "The fact is the consumer is in a recession." That's Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz on his decision to offer $1 cups of coffee and close 100 stores. (He's opening 1,175 stores this year.) [WSJ]
• Also for Obama: Daniel Patrick Moynihan's widow, Charlie Rangel's wife? [NY Times]
• The Winograd Commission decides the 2006 Lebanon war was flawed but "inevitable" and not some cynical overcompensation on the part of Ehud Olmert. [NY Times]