• Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal bishop, delivered a four-minute invocation at the Mall on Sunday. Although HBO had exclusive rights to broadcast the invocation it did not make it to air. [Politico]

• Thoroughly reliable source and garbage PUMA blogger Perez Hilton says that Robinson's invocation didn't air because Obama's people told HBO not to air it. [Perez Hilton]
• HBO says that the invocation did not air because of a "planning error." The Inaugural concert began its live broadcast at 2:30pm (ET) and Robinson's invocation started at 2:20pm (ET). The invocation will air in repeats and will stream on HBO.com. [Deadline Hollywood]
• Meanwhile, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 61% of people surveyed said they back Rick Warren as the inaugural invocation pick. [Washington Post]
• Dick Cheney pulled a muscle in his back yesterday while moving boxes into his new house. He will be attending Obama's inauguration in a wheelchair. [Reuters]
• Meanwhile, on Monday a federal judge lifted an injunction requiring preservation of Dick Cheney's records because she said she expected Cheney to preserve them himself. The injunction was put in place when a group of government watchdogs and historians claimed that Cheney might destroy some of his records. [UPI]
• Blogette Meghan McCain got an exclusive interview with her mother for The Daily Beast. Cindy said that although she "is not bitter" she did think there was a strong bias in the media against her husband, John McCain. [Wonkette, Poynter]
• Last night Obama held a dinner honoring McCain whom he called an American hero and whose bipartisanship he hopes to follow. [MSNBC, The Page]
• McCain has told Fox News that Palin could someday be President. [The Page]
• An effigy of Sarah Palin with a noose around her neck was taken off of eBay on Sunday. This is the same effigy that was protested by the Mayor of West Hollywood when it was hung outside of a West Hollywood home of a professional window dresser and his partner before the election. [UPI]
• George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, died peacefully in his sleep last night. He was 62. [The Onion]
• Nancy Pelosi went on Fox News to say that she wants Obama to extend the Bush tax cuts (for families earning more than $250,000) when they expire in 2010. [Politico]
• Adorable child-reporter Damon Weaver is still looking to lock down a one-on-one with Obama as he covers the inauguration today. [NPR]
• Ha ha: Bush has decided to not pardon Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, for his 2007 conviction in the CIA leak case. [Newsweek]
• Sources say that Obama may quickly issue an executive order to reverse a Bush abortion policy (commonly called "the Mexico City policy") that prohibited funding for international family planning groups that provided, promoted or provided information about abortion services. [CNN]
• Bill Ayers has been denied entry into Canada because of a 1969 conviction during an anti-war demonstration. [MSNBC]
• Oh yeah: in keeping with tradition, Bush left a note for Obama . [MSNBC]

MEGAN: Is it just me, or is your mind blown that David Letterman managed to beat journalists and political strategists to the whole McCain pals around with a dude that liked to bomb crap, too thing?

SPENCER: Remember, it's not the ASSOCIATION, it's the LYING.

MEGAN: Oh, you mean like how McCain did initially when asked about it?

SPENCER: And when McCain pauses for a moment, apparently unable to remember whether he attended any fundraisers thrown by G Gordon Liddy.

MEGAN: Actually, we can just go to the tape, where it's 3 minutes in. After that, he cops to more than just "knowing" the guy.

SPENCER: Well, let's give credit to the ChicTrib's Steve Chapman, who did write "McCain Has His Own Ayers" on Oct. 7

Liddy has contributed thousands of dollars to his campaigns, held a fundraiser for McCain at his home and hosted the senator on his radio show, where McCain said, "I'm proud of you." Exactly which part of Liddy's record is McCain proud of?

MEGAN: Maybe this part?

After the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, he endorsed the shooting of federal agents: "Kill the sons of bitches."

SPENCER: But this is the interesting part. You've seen exactly one liberal, Tom Frank, defend Ayers, in the WSJ, and that was on the grounds of pure friendship. Meanwhile, Liddy emerged unrepentant from Watergate, which Chapman reminds us was "-part of a broader plot to steal the 1972 election through sabotage, illegal spying and other dirty tricks," to become a widely beloved right-wing talk radio host. To answer Chapman's rhetorical question, that's the part McCain is "proud of," or at least has to display fealty toward.

MEGAN: Also, by the way, let's not forget how Liddy plotted a fucking POLITICAL ASSASSINATION. Or the bombing he wanted to do at the Brookings Institute. The guy is a fucking psycho, that's probably why he and McCain are all BFF.

SPENCER: But they're not, really. It's a transactional relationship — McCain needs to kiss a ring to stay in the good graces of Fever Swamp America. That's why the whole thing is so tawdry and contempt-inducing.

MEGAN: But, back to stealing elections and voter intimidation. So, ACORN. Former Republican US attorney David Iglesias admits they were the target in 2004 and 2006 and they didn't do anything illegal but he was asked to gun for them.

SPENCER: Yes ABOUT that attempted election theft.

MEGAN: Oh, well, it's not really theft if they can keep voters from the polls in the first place!

SPENCER: Here's something that consumed my former TPM colleague Paul Kiel, the hardest working muckraker in the business, while we were there. Everyone remember that Alberto Gonzales fired nine US attorneys, most of them Republicans, because, among other things, they wouldn't accede to pressure to prosecute Democrats or bring bogus election-fraud cases ahead of the vote, a longstanding tradition of countries that aren't, say, Venezuela.

MEGAN: I mean, if you can't bring political prosecutions to solidify your grip on power, what's the point of packing the Justice Department with underqualified political hacks? Duh.

SPENCER: And Gonzo, thanks to the intrepid work of Paul and Justin Rood and Josh Marshall (with some help from Pat Leahy and John Conyers), resigned in disgrace last year. But before he left, Gonzo changed the rules in the DOJ voter manual precisely so his legacy would live on. F'rinstance:

The new version (pdf), which replaced the 1995 manual, lowers the bar in terms of voter fraud prosecutions — no longer cautioning against pursuing isolated, individual cases of fraud and softening language that had all but prohibited pursuing such cases before an election.

This is what's behind this apparent federal investigation of ACORN. Now, ACORN says that despite a leak from the FBI (!) it's not under investigation.

MEGAN: It's so tawdry, even the FBI feels used by Republicans. Their assholes haven't hurt this bad since J. Edgar died. Plus, yeah, what happened to conducting an investigation in secret and not leaking stupid shit? Did they learn nothing from having to pay out the ass to Stephen Hatfill?

SPENCER: But whoever leaked this shit — Lara Jakes Jordan of the AP (she got the Santorum "man on dog" interview, fun fact) says it's two "senior law enforcement officials" —- is obviously trying to spread the smear that there is a widespread voter-fraud effort underway on the left. FBI best practices are not the point. This is what Nixon's operatives — like Liddy! — called a "ratfuck": you politicize and smear and introduce toxins into the news bloodstream, all in the interest of creating a Big Lie

MEGAN: Or an alternate truth. A truthiness.

SPENCER: The vote-fraud manual changes are designed to build corruption into the system. And I wonder I wonder I wonder how the right will appreciate a vigorous Feingold Justice Department effort at disenfranchising conservative voters in September or October of 2012.

MEGAN: I do have to say, I actually think Republican efforts to keep people from voting are a little ironic, because I really think everyone should vote, but I'm actually concerned what would happen in they did. I like that Republicans think the country would move left, and I'm scared it would head far, far to the right. Does that mean Republicans are actually less misanthropic than me? Or just that I've spent more time talking to Real Americans(TM) than them?

SPENCER: It strikes me that that's a bit besides the point of the effort. Winning elections through designed-in fraud is only one part of it. The larger part — if I can use a Nixonland term — is to persecute, confuse and weaken the left and its constituent parts. Everything else is academic. They recognize that you could probably build a center-right coalition that could win honest elections — with some hiccups or interregnum periods of Democratic revival — but you can't build a far-right governing coalition of any durability. The last time that was attempted... why, we're living through it, and it ends in multiple quagmire-y wars and global financial catastrophe and a 90-percent wrong-track poll rating. So you get shit like this:

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday, after the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 9-6 on Tuesday that Ms. Brunner must notify election boards of all voter records containing information that doesn't match driver's license or Social Security databases.

Ms. Brunner's appeal said many mismatches will appear for trivial reasons, such as typographical errors. She said Wednesday that as many as 200,000 of Ohio's 660,000 new registrants this year could be affected. The order — stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Ohio Republican Party — gave her until Friday to either provide lists of mismatches to election officials or give them an easy way to search a state database. In her court filing, she said early efforts to reprogram state computers have turned up glitches in the matching process.

I don't want to be hysterical about this, but liberal circles are starting to wonder whether Ohio could be stolen for real this time, with 2004 as a warm-up act.

MEGAN: And what's worse is most of those 200,000 disenfranchised people might never vote again. Fuck "might," they won't.

SPENCER: Explain that please

MEGAN: I mean, most people in this country don't vote. And if your first voting experience is to show up at the polls only to be told to fuck off, why would you? It takes at least two and usually 3 elections to solidify the voter participation habit among people that aren't fucked out of voting by a corrupt system.

SPENCER: ... and this indeed would be three.

MEGAN: So, in theory, the Republicans aren't just stealing this election, they're insuring Democratic voters don't show up for years to come.

SPENCER: And here's where I'm tied in knots: on the one hand, you have the good-government, pro-democracy position that retaliation by a liberal administration would be an unalloyed evil, a net loss for the country. But on the other. If the Republican Party is going to act like a criminal cartel, then persecution — and I'm not going to whitewash this through euphemism; let's be clear about this — makes sense. What's to stop them from doing this if they don't pay a price? And I don't mean just an electoral price, because in January 2009 they'll just start preparing for the next round of fraud. What do you think?

MEGAN: I mean, do you have to persecute when/if you can prosecute? In addition, they continue to justify these voter-fraud "initiatives" (a.k.a., voter disenfranchisement efforts) by raising the specter of fucking 1960 and the then-Mayor Daley and dead people voting. that's almost 50 years ago, but that's what they'll argue every single fucking time In fact, I had that argument with a Republican friend of mine this weekend, that they're just doing it to "make sure" things are fair because Democrats "have a history" of this. That's my concern with persecution, that it'll just become this century-long tit-for-tat game that makes the electoral process even more fucked up than it has to be and discourages even more people from participating. That said, yes, I would love to see some asses kicked and some heads fucking roll.

SPENCER: OH SHIT CNN is saying that ACORN's Boston offices were broken into. Does G Gordon Liddy have an alibi?

MEGAN: Fuck Gordon Libby, check the Romneys. And Kevin Madden, who I think I should really be forced to strip search. Those are, like, the only Republicans in the area.

• P.U.M.A. hunter Katie Halper put together a campaign commercial for John McCain so that his female supporters all understand what they're voting for — including unequal pay, a lack of reproductive choice and half-assed health insurance coverage. Politics starts at home, ladies. [Katie Halper]
• Actual McCain staffers and Sarah Palin are trying to convince John McCain to open up Wright debate again because — as Sarah said yesterday — they've got nothing to lose. McCain, however, still likes his dignity some, so they're sneaking around behind his back to find other people to fund it. [Politico, CBS]
• Yes, of course, Obama is totally prepped to talk about Ayers tonight. He's probably prepped to talk about Wright, too, if it comes to that. [Chicago Tribune]
• McCain's been prepping, too, if this leaked debate prep video is anything to go by. Join in on my liveblog (thread starts at 7:30 ET, I start blogging at 9:00 ET) to see if he takes any of their advice! [The Jed Report]

• Wonder Woman Linda Carter thinks Sarah Palin is the anti-Wonder Woman, calling her "judgmental and dictatorial" and suggesting that Hillary Clinton is more the W.W. archetype. Go Linda Carter! [The Hill]
• Apparently, since Colin Powell is now a confirmed African-American, having announced it at a rally in Africa, Fox News is ready to guarantee that he's going to endorse Obama. There's nothing racist about that, though, nope, not at all. Don't you know all black people do everything together? [Washington Independent]
• Kansas Senator Pat Robert's Democratic opponent, Jim Slattery, has a new ad that makes it look like Wall Street is pissing on us little people. That's kind of what it feels like some days. [Attackerman]
• With another stock sell-off on Wall Street, today was one of those days. [NY Times]

MEGAN: Are you excited for the final showdown? The claws will come out, hair will get pulled, someone will get bitchslapped for sure, I am way excited. But, enough about Project Runway, we should probably talk about the news.

SPENCER: Don't talk to me about TV. I came home yesterday to find that my fleeing roommate has absconded with the Flophouse's massive flatscreen, one of the only things that makes my house livable. At least he seems to have left the speakers.

MEGAN: So, I guess you'll be listening to the debates then? Or just bargain hunting at Best Buy? If you want, we can make use of my Sam's Club card sometime. Sadly, Obama won't be perched on a stool looking damn cool this time while Crankypants paces around trying to figure out why he's losing.

SPENCER: I'm too elitist to shop at Sam's Club.

MEGAN: They have arugula, I checked!

SPENCER: So what's the format this time?

MEGAN: Seated behind a desk instead of standing behind podiums, they will both get to deal with Bob Schieffer's questions and McCain won't be able to condescend to anyone but the two of them and the viewing public writ large.

SPENCER: The debate going back and forth in liberal circles: is McCain really stupid enough to think Obama doesn't have a good response line to Ayers; or does Obama really... not have a good response line to Ayers? WHO YA GOT?

MEGAN: I think he ought to have a good response to Ayers, but his ability to pull it off depends on how the question is framed. He didn't do so well with the whole preconditions thing in the first debate. But this is a decent start, from someone willing to call Ayers "friend."

SPENCER: I just sent a desperate email to my old roommate begging her to move back to the Flophouse. I'm sorry — yeah, Tom Frank. I wonder: does the country have the maturity to handle this line:

Nor will I quibble with those who find Mr. Ayers wanting in contrition. His 2001 memoir is shot through with regret, but it lacks the abject style our culture prefers.

MEGAN: Even Paris Hilton had to find God in prison, so, my answer would be: no.

SPENCER: So much packed into that one. And right you are: Would conservatives actually be satisfied, even if Ayers performed a full renunciation? But when you're down a massive 14 points in a two-candidate field you take your satisfaction where you find it, if I can butcher a Murder City Devils line.

MEGAN: Well, I think this is probably at least an equally accurate description of their motivations:

There are a lot of things to call this tactic, but "country first" isn't one of them. The nation wants its hope and confidence restored, and Republican leaders have chosen instead to wave the bloody shirt. This is their vilest hour.

I think they are salting the earth, basically.

SPENCER: There'll always be something viler, though. You can't expect them to have found the bottom floor. Even after the guns go off...

MEGAN: That's true, but, technically, you don't salt the earth after you retreat, you salt it on your way out.

SPENCER: In fact, I want to outsource my crazy-winger morning commentary to my friend's Twitter feed today:

O'Reilly tonight: "Democrats complain about personal attacks, but WAIT TIL YOU SEE Doonsbury's attack on Sarah Palin."

MEGAN: I believe that is when the Republican Party jumps the shark. Are there non-dittoheads who didn't roll their eyes at that? Because I rolled mine so far back I gave myself more of a headache.

SPENCER: Speaking of Twitter, I'm taking an aside: Is anyone else getting porn spam on their LOCKED Twitter accounts? And furthermore, do you have any idea how porn spam is supposed to work on Twitter? (@unsuspectinguser, just finished shooting a bukkake movie. less gross than suspected)

MEGAN: Um, some porny person tried to add me, but I blocked him and also, ew.

SPENCER: Speaking of bukkake, Palin's negatives are extremely high in that NYT poll

MEGAN: I am not sure I will ever be able to write as good a segue as that one, so I have decided not to try.

SPENCER:

Ms. Palin’s favorability rating is now 32 percent, down 8 points from last month, and her unfavorable rating climbed nine percentage points to 41 percent.

John McCain: so few opportunities to shoot his load, and this is where he aims... Sometimes I forget people read this in the morning.

MEGAN: Yes, I briefly had a mental image of John McCain's Oh face, there, which means I won't eat until lunch but I had a big dinner and baked cookies, so I probably don't need to eat breakfast anyway. And I won't be needing yogurt, that's for sure. In a completely not awkward segue, we should probably talk about John McCain's crazypants brother, who thinks that the campaign is run by idiots who write bad ads and don't let John be John. He apparently spammed the entire Republican party with his missive.

SPENCER: Not to use a cliche, but it's interesting that Joe "Northern Virginia is Communist Country" McCain thinks the campaign has been too restrained. What in the world would count as "unshackled" to a man like him?

MEGAN: Well, it is the People's Republic of Arlington. I'm sure he just got confused. But let Joe McCain put to rest all thoughts that John McCain got his crazy on in the Hanoi Hilton.

SPENCER: And "Let John McCain Be John McCain"? This isn't a campaign strategy, it's a coping mechanism. I have no inclination to believe at this point that McCain isn't being McCain — he disgraced himself in the Keating 5 scandal and he disgraced himself in the 2000 race when he pandered to racists on the South Carolina confederate flag and he's disgraced himself today. Three points determine a line. Look, if he were my brother, I'd blame everyone else too, but the only thing more consistent than John McCain's willingness to disgrace himself in the pursuit of his ambition is the willingness of the press to believe that he didn't really mean it.

MEGAN: I mean, I never really understood that, actually. Is John McCain really that much more charming than other politicians to political writers? Can you do this for a living and really buy the Straight Talk Express gimmick so easily?

SPENCER: It goes back to self-loathing. If you hate yourself that deeply, then the way he uses you can be a ready substitute for caring. So think about it, press corps! Rediscover your self-worth. You're better than this man.

MEGAN: So, John McCain is just the boyfriend who shines you on that he cares about you and you accept it because you don't know the difference?

SPENCER: And you just end up in his bukkake movie that he leaks to the internet.

• If it wasn't enough to attack Barack Obama for what few ties he has to Bill Ayers, the McCain campaign is attempting to tie Michelle Obama to Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers' wife. Dohrn worked at Sidley Austin (a firm of 500 lawyer plus hordes of legal staff) at Sidley Austin in 1984, three years before Michelle did, so they were obvs BFF and conspired about... well, stuff. You know "those ones." [Talking Points Memo]
• McCain has decided to ask his supporters to try being "respectful" at rallies, despite his staff saying it's all Obama's fault that they aren't. [Politico, MSNBC]
• The former Republican governor of Michigan, William Milliken, respectfully thinks that McCain isn't the same guy he endorsed in the primaries. [Huffington Post]
• Republican Congressman Ray LaHood respectfully thinks that Sarah Palin's race-baiting "doesn't befit the office that she's running for." [Huffington Post]

• The Troopergate report will probably come out eventually. Just not in time for me to write about it tonight, so it must be juicy. [Washington Post]
• Rensselaer County, New York, "mistakenly" printed Barack Obama's name as "Barack Osama" on absentee ballots. I mistakenly typed this entire entry with my middle finger pointed in their direction and still managed not to confuse the letters B or S, let alone BS. [Times Union]
• Vladimir Putin got a tiger for his birthday, because he is completely insane. He's donating it to a zoo because, sadly, he's not the kind of crazy that would endanger his own life. Other people's? You betcha. [Huffington Post]
• And, although everyone told me he was a philanderer when I had a crush on him, the the former head of French police intelligence's diaries confirmed that Nicolas Sarkozy was banging his friend's wife back in the day. Le sigh. I always fall for the wrong guy. [The Times]

Anyway, the point being, McCain's policy prescriptions, such as, have failed to capture the imagination of the middle of the American electorate the same way they failed to capture the imagination of the Republican-controlled Congress when most of them were proposed by the Bush Administration. But having hung out with enough fear-mongers and race-baiters, McCain's staff does have some ideas of what they think might just turn it around: character assassination. That's right, bring on the smears!

I mean, to a degree, I guess the Obama camp is lucky that the smear-tastic new advertisement by McCain is such a hack job that even Time scribe Jay Carney wonders how in the world it got this bad. Well, it's pretty obvious:

1. Take an ad you already started that was intended to highlight how much to Democratic leadership sucked on the bailout plan
2. Realize that most Americans aren't polling that way now
3. Shoehorn stuff about Bill Ayers into it the same way you've randomly shoehorned it into the campaign
4. Hope no one notices the irony of one candidate for the highest office in the land accusing the other of "ambition," let alone the racial undertones of accusing him of being too ambitious
5. TBD
6. Electoral success

The next step, obviously, since Republicans are "calling" for the McCain campaign to go after Jeremiah Wright, is to find a way to do it without calling into question Sarah Palin's own questionable religious affiliations. Ooh! Ooh! I know! They'll just "leak" a story to the Republican-leaning Wall Street Journal about how they're totally being pushed to bring up Jeremiah Wright but their candidate is way too honorable for those sorts of shenanigans. People's religions should be off the table! And then they get to soften the image of their candidate while bringing it up and make it look like he's not the one attacking anything even as they send off the Vice Presidential candidate and the surrogates with plenty of anti-Obama talking points on both issues.

Now, if only every time you mention his name, you can get someone in the crowd to shout, "Traitor!"... Yeah, that should distract those stupid Americans long enough that they forget that McCain's economic plans are Bush 2.0, that he wants to keep America's military engaged and dying in Iraq, that his new mortgage bailout plan is not only Hillary Clinton's idea but extremely costly and that his health care plan is the worst idea since teabagging Charlie Keating. They're in it to win it!

McCain-Palin 2008 Launches New TV Ad: "Ambition" [John McCain]
Bill Ayres Gutted Your 401K. Who Knew? [Swampland]
"South Park's" Investing Lesson [Motley Fool]
McCain Campaign Is at Odds Over Negative Attacks' Scope [Wall Street Journal]
Does Sarah Palin Have a Pentecostal Problem? [Time]
McCain Supporter Calls Obama A 'Traitor' At Campaign Rally [Think Progress]

ANA MARIE: Greetings from Milwaukee's FINEST hotel.

MEGAN: You're at a Marriott, aren't you.

ANA MARIE: But you know, I had to wait, like 90 minutes for my luggage last night. I didn't get a king size bed! There is no creamer in my in room coffee! WIRE COAT HANGERS!!!! Actually, we're at "The Pfister," which has led to many attempts at humor from the traveling press corps. Personal favorite? "Pfister? I hardly knew her." (Hi, Sasha!)

MEGAN: See, I prefer wire coat hangers to the kind that don't come off the rod, which it's just like: really? I'm going to steal a hanger? Fuck you.

ANA MARIE: Actually, the coat hangers are fine. And there's a robe. That was all a rather extended segue into Alex Balk's rather awesome rant about a certain campaign journalist's peak at "how the other half lives." That someone would — apparently unself-consciously — use the title of a book about the lives of the desperately poor to describe the life of a pampered campaign journalist is... gosh, the word "ironic" is overused, huh I admit: I have complained about such things as HAVING TO GET UP EARLY. Or WAITING IN LINE.

MEGAN: Not that I like mornings. Or other people in my way.

ANA MARIE: Totally! It sucks!

MEGAN: Or pretty much anything before coffee.

ANA MARIE: But you know what? I am staying in Milwaukee's finest hotel. And I'm not being sarcastic.

MEGAN: I used to work for a Milwaukee-based company. It's really not a bad town. It's way better than Lansing. Plus, you really can get cheese with pretty much everything you'll eat there.

ANA MARIE: But to anyone complaining in public and unironically about pretty much anything inconvenient about life on the trail gets one response from me: I bet they deliver the luggage right on time in Baghdad, asshole. Seriously: More journalists have died covering that illegal war than any other international conflict. So if you are unsatisfied with the food in the file center, I am sorry. And this is just staying in the realm of "other bad jobs IN JOURNALISM you could have." If we went in the direction of "thankful for having a job at all" I could get a little angrier. Oh, and I've just made a discovery! Outrage is as good a pick-me-up as coffee.

MEGAN: Yeah, asshole, come blog with me! My couch can totally fit two people and I guarantee you won't have trouble finding your bags because my apartment is small. Also, I mean, like, has that guy not traveled other than for work? My sister went on her honeymoon and the airlines lost her luggage for two days.

ANA MARIE: Oh, and did I say "other bad jobs in journalism"? I meant "other jobs you could have in journalism which is rapidly shrinking pool thanks to the ever growing trend of treating news as entertainment and otherwise not putting any money at all into actual investigative reporting but instead spending $50k a month to keep you on the trail covering Barack Obama from the confines of a slightly off-smelling CHARTER PLANE."

MEGAN: He should be thankful it's not a bus.

ANA MARIE: A bus that people the color of certain presidential candidates used to sit at the back of. I suppose we should move along. But if I see Dean Reynolds today, I will ask him if he slept well on the pillow top beds here at the Pfister.

MEGAN: Why, so we can state obvious things like McCain's mortgage buyout plan will cost taxpayers money? Let alone make the government the entity responsible for foreclosing on people?

ANA MARIE: Oh god. Well the good thing about McCain's plan is that it depends on him being elected president.

MEGAN: But he's that one with the stones to bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran which we're obviously going to need to do.

ANA MARIE: Well I was worried we'd look silly going bankrupt as a nation spending on only two wars. Three? That makes us look like at least we have a reason.

MEGAN: Well, if we actually gave a shit about nuclear proliferation we might have had 4, but since it's all about posturing and hating on those of the Islamic faith, we might keep it to 3.

ANA MARIE: (Side note: apparently outrage+hangover is a worse combination than coffee+hangover because I'm kind of nauseous!)

MEGAN: Not including Pakistan, of course, we would never attack Pakistan, what with its stable and Democratic government run by a kleptocrat with little intention of hurting his personal access to power and money by reining in Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents on the borders that are attacking American troops in Afghanistan. There, well, that's a time for diplomacy.

ANA MARIE: But Megan, they're all BROWN (ish)! Can't add NoKo to the list just based on that? Well, Pakistan is a failed state.

MEGAN: It totally was (not) when Musharraf, our Great Ally, took it over in a political coup.

ANA MARIE: I am too hungover to even roll my eyes.

MEGAN: Also, do you think anyone in our foreign policy establishment has looked around and gone, hmmm. Maybe the reason countries like Iran want nukes is because when countries like Pakistan get them —regardless of their politics or warlike nature — America starts teabagging their leaders?

ANA MARIE: (And drinks last night were, of course, bought on the tabs of various major news organizations. BUT THEY DID NOT HAVE BASIL HAYDEN AT THE BAR, so I'm pissed.) Or, you know, countries like Iran want nukes because we have them?

MEGAN: My hangover is brought to you courtesy of a $9 bottle of Greg Norman Syrah bought at the grocery store. My outrage is from 2 years of a foreign policy Masters program.

ANA MARIE: I love Greg Norman wines! I had some GN chard on Tuesday. At the PF Changs in Nashville. Where dinner was courtesy of a nice Secret Service agent. BUT THEN IT RAINED. FUCK YOU, UNIVERSE.

MEGAN: Well, it was after Labor Day, presumably you weren't wearing white.

ANA MARIE: I haven't worn white since my thighs grew to their current size.

MEGAN: Best headline to a boring story we'll get all day: "Todd Palin had unusual access to wife's staff."

ANA MARIE: His wife has a staff? I thought we only made transgender jokes about Hillary! Yay, progress!

MEGAN: Also, I guess we now know what kind of kicky sex she was with "Driller" who I think the Secret Service probably should have dubbed "Drillee" if this is true.

ANA MARIE: I'm just glad women in power no longer have to be kind of butch in order to have people suspect they have a penis.

MEGAN: Well, they are pretty easy to buy these days, except in Mississippi.

ANA MARIE: And Scalia is so pissed about that. I see Hannity re-upped with Fox. So, you know, the nation is safe. In the sense that Colbert will not be cancelled for the next whatevermany years.

MEGAN: I think Scalia is pissed at the proliferation of sex toys because he blames them for not getting any ass. When, really, even lacking a sex toy, I would not ever have fucked Scalia. I don't think I'm alone in this.

ANA MARIE: Okay, I have met Scalia and I found him charming. But I also — in my single days — was not a stranger to sex with guys that made me hate myself. (Thank you Chris for saving me from that!)

MEGAN: You know, I actually thought about it and there's not anyone I hate myself for fucking. But I am also really egotistical, so it might have just not made a dent.

ANA MARIE: I actually argued with Scalia about partial birth abortion. At a party.

MEGAN: And? Did he argue back?

ANA MARIE: He basically tolerated my and my friend's drunken ranting with good humor. When he probably could of had us arrested. Or killed. Quick side note: I was once telling this story the daughter of one of our major presidential nominees and she asked, "Who's Scalia?"

MEGAN: Ok, but, I mean, it's not really fair to ask Malia to know these things.

ANA MARIE: Hint: this daughter had skin that could not in any way be described as "dusky." To be fair, Malia was really articulate when she defended the Kelo decision.

MEGAN: Anyway, should we discuss the new Ayers ads?

ANA MARIE: Christ. Here's the thing — and I know you might/will definitely disagree — what's weird about the Ayers shit is that, of all the things you could use to draw Obama's judgment into question, the best you can come up with is Ayers? Serious? Because I honestly think the 20 years he spent in Jeremiah Wright's church is a more interesting question. I ultimately don't think it changes my mind about voting for the guy, but it's a more interesting question.

MEGAN: Well, I mean, I don't disagree with you that there are better rational things but I think the Ayers think allows McCain's campaign to repeat the word "terrorist" over and over again and you know people ain't thinking some white college professor dude.

ANA MARIE: Yeah. Tho I don't think McCain actually focus-grouped that. Then again, he didn't have to.

MEGAN: It's like a twofer. It's hard for people to articulate why it's racist and wrong and it engenders the responses you want.

ANA MARIE: And the really funny thing? I don't think anyone on the campaign actually put any thought into that strategy. It just sort of happened! Like casual racism everywhere.

MEGAN: I don't know, this is the team of political strategists that gave McCain a black baby 8 years ago. I don't think it's unintentional. Because, like you said, the Wright thing is more interesting and complex. And, God knows, McCain's got his own bad associates, so it's not like they're doing Ayers to avoid getting into Palin's religion either.

ANA MARIE: You're going to make me link to my article about how Steve Schmidt is not a "Rove protege" again, aren't you?

MEGAN: You can, but I wasn't necessarily talking about Steve Schmidt, either. The Bush 2000 team pre-dates Schmidt.

ANA MARIE: Interestingly, most of the Bush 2000 team is actually working for Palin.

MEGAN: Who is, naturally, the person out there hitting on Ayers the hardest.

ANA MARIE: Yes, that is suggestive. And not in a good way! (Unlike, say, the idea of Palin's "staff".)

MEGAN: It's just another wink and a nod from Bible Spice.

ANA MARIE: Can we use that metaphor from now on, instead of "dog whistle"? Which is insulting to dogs.

MEGAN: Yeah, it's really unfair to compare dogs to racists.

ANA MARIE: Someone last night caught me watching Top Model on the plane and (there is a connection here) I had to explain that after a long day of covering an increasingly ugly race, pretty much the only things that help me unwind are really bad reality television shows and pictures of adorable animals.

MEGAN: I watched Project Runway, but, in the end, I wish I'd just stuck to Rachel Maddow.

ANA MARIE: NO DO NOT TELL ME
SPOILER ALERT
::HANDS OVER EARS::
LALALALALALA

MEGAN: Ana, I hate to tell you, there is no Santa Claus.

ANA MARIE: I am bitter and cling to my belief in a gun-toting Easter Bunny.

• A new poll shows that 55 percent of Americans think Obama cares more about people like them. No, they didn't show anyone this picture first. [CNN]
• They also didn't show it to the white women surveyed by Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics who helped show that Palin's nomination hasn't disrupted the traditional gender gap between Republicans and Democrats on a long-term basis. [Politico]
• And obviously no one showed it to the guy who accused Obama of treason at a Palin rally, because, really, even Norman Rockwell would throw up his hands and turn to abstract art if he saw this picture. [Huffington Post]
• But back to the whole accusing the other guy of your own missteps meme, Cindy McCain says that Obama has "waged the dirtiest campaign in American history." Riiiight. [Huffington Post]

• Fox News would like you to know that "facts are not irrefutable." Man, they really are just becoming the Ministry of Truth. [Huffington Post]
• The media would like you to know that they might get cussed out by Republicans at Palin rallies all the time, but it's much rarer that anyone uses racial slurs. Rare is good. It's just not as good as "not at all." [Politico]
• Oh, and if McCain would like to keep talking about Bill Ayers — and he does — he might want to check out the former lyncher and heroin trafficker, James Fowler, he used to be associated with. And then he might want to shut the fuck up. [The Anniston Star, via Andrew Sullivan]
• By the way, a federal judge ordered the release of 26 Chinese Uighurs from Gitmo because the evidence against them is unreliable and the government decided to hold onto them anyway. [Washington Post]
• Which is sort of the only good news because the Dow lost another 500 points today. [NY Times]
• Well, that and I'll be live-blogging tonight's Presidential debate. The thread starts at 7:30 ET, my liveblog starts just before 9:00 ET.