• The original terrorist — not the fist bumping kind — knows who he wants us to elect. Surprise! It's John McCain. [US News & World Report]
• That might be because he escaped us at least twice by going into Pakistan and because our troops weren't allowed to walk into Pakistan, and John McCain plans to continue that policy. [CBS News]
• And, like he plans to leave Pakistan alone, McCain's decided to leave Michigan alone, too. Guess they figured that they wouldn't be able to disenfranchise enough foreclosed-upon voters to eke out a win after all. [Washington Post]
• Since he's staying the course in Philly, though, voter intimidation tactics continue apace. [Philly.com]

• Because, if he doesn't, he's pretty well fucked in the electoral college. [Politico]
• Sort of like Sarah Palin's wrist supposedly is. Unless it's just a tactic to garner some sympathy, which it totally is. How many women around John McCain have to sport bum wrists before someone starts asking questions? [Politico]
• Barack and Michelle will celebrate their 16th wedding anniversary tomorrow with a quiet dinner that Barack requested the press pool leave them alone for. Fat chance, sucker. We want pictures, and so does Axelrod. [Huffington Post]
• Oh, hey, Bob Barr is still running! He thinks McCain is a hypocrite. Run, Bob, Run! [The Hill]
• Also, women find Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is a sexist hypocrite. [Pandagon]
• Wall Street Journal reporter Dorothy Rabinowitz thinks that overreaching surveillance by our government that is eroding our civil rights is totes okay with her because people died on September 11th. What's that saying? Those who would sacrifice freedom for security... [Washington Independent]

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

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

SPENCER: Country First, goddammit.

MEGAN: This is not a time for partisan politics!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MEGAN: Oh, her poor interns.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPENCER: No! She did????

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

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

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

MEGAN: Hey, it's finally Friday! I get to sleep in tomorrow!

JASON Hey. Me too! So remember how everyone said, "OMGZ. You have to stop attacking Sarah Palin! It only makes her stronger?"

MEGAN: Actually, I think I said, please stop attacking her because it makes us look bad. And, specifically, please stop attacking her for gendered reasons.

JASON Well, certain criticisms, especially gendered criticisms, do make us look bad. Substantive ones, however, work.

MEGAN: Also helpful: getting a Republican Senator to say that saying she has foreign policy experience is an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

JASON Yeppers! Hagel's just the latest conservative to do so, following David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer (what Teutonic supervillain hasn't dreamed of calling himself DER KRAUTHAMMER), and, of course, the off-camera Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan. Those guys make Palin-contrarianism okay for others, though you watch - Brooks will change his mind as soon as the wind changes direction: you need to be humming "Personal Jesus" in order to have more depeche mode than Brooks. And, of course, Tina Fey has made it okay to make fun of Palin. Even Palin can do it, with the sound down!

MEGAN: Speaking of Peggy...

Hoover was not good for the Republican brand.

And the Democrats are mean for trying to turn Bush into Hoover because GWB has been soooo good for the Republican brand. Just as Tom Davis.

JASON She seems awash in contradiction:

Both the Democrats and the Republicans spent the week treating the catastrophe as a political opportunity. This was unserious. A serious approach might have addressed large questions such as: Was this crisis not, at bottom, a failure of stewardship?

Instead, from Barack Obama: It's the Republicans' fault, and John McCain means more of the same. From McCain: We're reformers and we'll clean up the mess, unlike Mr. I Can't Think of Anything to Do but Raise Taxes.

It seems to me that Obama, in this case, is...I dunno — pointing out the BAD STEWARDSHIP.

MEGAN: Uhh, but then she sorta goes here:

A fearless prediction: My beautiful election enters its dark phase.

Lots of signs of the new darkness. Mr. Obama's army is swarming, blocking lines when Obama critics show up for radio interviews. A study out Thursday said the Obama campaign has become more negative than the McCain campaign.

At least she didn't call it a "black" phase.

Oh, and here's the best rationale she can come up with of how "constrained" McCain will be if he wins (so go ahead and vote for him, you know ya wanna):

A New York liberal leaning toward Mr. McCain told me this week he has no fear that Mr. McCain may be a more militant figure than Mr. Obama. We already have two wars, "we're out of army." Even if Mr. McCain wanted a war, he said, he couldn't start one.

Ah, the old "scarce resources" argument. Sure, we could never, like, institute a draft. Start a new Cold War by being super-hawkish on Russia. We would never start a third war when we've already got troops in 2, totally not. So, Vote McCain! Since he can't start a third war his first day in office.

JASON Oy. Noonan. Let's all make the election "beautiful" again. Maybe she hasn't noticed the creepy "Drill, Baby, Drill" chants?

MEGAN: Maybe she has, and they made certain parts of her tingly?

JASON The problem we have is not that we can't start new wars. It's that we can't finish them.

MEGAN: We start new ones to distract from the fact that we haven't finished the old ones. Oh, hey, speaking of unfinished wars.

JASON HA. Yeah. See. That's how you go to war without an army. People forget about the Contras. And the, uhm...mujahadeen.

By the way, according to an email I just received (so take it with a grain of salt, because my inbox gets filled with apocrypha, spam, and letters authored by Matt Stoller), Ari Fleischer on the Today show this morning said that the financial crisis was basically the public's fault. [He did. I heard him. -Ed.] Y'all borrowed all this money!

MEGAN: Yeah, it's no longer "America, Fuck Yeah!" it's now "America, Fuck You!"
Fuck you for believing George Bush when he asked you to spend our way out of the first recession to keep the terrorists from winning.

Fuck you for buying houses you couldn't afford as everyone in and out of government told you prices would go up forever and ever.

Fuck you for taking on credit card debt to finance groceries and big screen TVs and everything else you thought you needed when what you really needed was to buy some fucking Big Boy Bootstraps and make enough money to not bother John McCain.

JASON Ahh, but you have to admire Fleischer. He's a pure shithead and he knows it. He's utter, sucking venality and he embraces it!

MEGAN: Ari Fleischer can go Fuck Himself.

JASON Ari Fleischer has already been there and back.

MEGAN: Ari Fleischer must be an extremely flexible person. Please note that I did not call him a "man."

JASON Noted!

MEGAN: Moving on from Ari Fleischer's amazing ability to toss his own salad (he does like it spicy and a little earthy), the polls show us white women are realizing that maybe, just maybe, McCain doesn't have our best interests at heart even if he does have one of us on the ticket, and are swinging back to Obama.

JASON Right. This is, I think, a by-product of the fact that Palin's appeal is waning, and more women are learning about McCain's stand on issues that matter to them. Months ago, researchers found wide variance in whether women were simply aware of McCain's opinion, and posited that once they knew, they'd shy away. What's going on with the white men, though? And, I'm asking!

MEGAN: Daddy issues?

JASON Because it seems to me, the Palin pick ought to hurt McCain there, too.

MEGAN: Do men vote for candidates they sort of want to sleep with?

JASON I mean, if Palin was a bona fide Margaret Thatcher type, you'd think that'd play better.

MEGAN: See, I don't know, I feel like the Palin-lovers are the same guys that were running around screaming "cankles" 6 months ago, you know?

JASON And texting you!

MEGAN: Oh, God, you know that asshole is voting for McCain. In fact, I do know because I got a Facebook news feed that told me so!

JASON And doing the other 19 things to ensure NO SEXING.

MEGAN: He was also numbers 1 and 11.

JASON You are totally right. Yikes. It was Tucker Bounds, wasn't it?

MEGAN: Tucker Bounds would've probably been an improvement. I believe Ana Marie and I determined he's just a dirty little sub that likes to be humiliated. I think, the dudes who are all into Palin now, it's some combination of chickenhawkishness that appeals to them about McCain, some sort of boastful "I could survive Viet Cong torture too, motherfucahhhh!" and some combination of that, to that kind of lame, text-messaging, small-dicked asshole Sarah Palin is indeed the kind of woman they'd like to think they could attract and even date. The difficulty with that is that Sarah Palin wouldn't put up with their shit, either. You see Todd yesterday? The whole time in Iowa on stage, there was this hot blonde totally checking him out and he didn't even notice. That's because Sarah doesn't fuck around and he knows it. We can at least give her credit for that.

JASON Word.

MEGAN: Okay, also, with all these "give money to Planned Parenthood in Palin's name" things floating around, I would like to now encourage an actual dirty trick that could hurt the "Palin" campaign.

JASON Because it mostly is the Palin campaign, now. Though Ana Marie said that in Wisconsin last night, people didn't walk out when McCain spoke.

MEGAN: Bob Barr, who is on the ballot in 44 states and suing to get on 5 more probably needs money. And, obviously, the biggest donors to Nader in 2000 were Republicans. Barr has the potential to spoil at least Georgia, if not places like Ohio and Florida. If you've got extra cash and you want to fuck with the Republicans in more than a symbolic way, swallow, swallow, swallow that bile and give to Bob Barr. But only if you are maxed out to Obama.

JASON Yeah, exactly. I agree. I mean, if i were an Obama supporter who'd maxed out my donations, I would totes give to Barr. All those people who are making cool YouTube ads for Obama? Take a minute and do one up for Barr, too.

MEGAN: That's how a real dirty trick works. Well, that and this way, which is a great example of how Republicans are trying to disenfranchise voters in swing states besides Michigan.

JASON Right. You get all sorts of things like this. I remember a few elections ago, up in Baltimore? People woke up on election day to postcards that said stuff like you couldn't vote if you were late with the rent and shit. If the Dems are smart, they have people going door-to-door, laying this mythology bare right now.

MEGAN: Also, if you are challenged at your polling place, fight the fuck back. Think of it as pissing on Tucker Bounds. Everyone wins!

MOE: Okay I cannot tell you how much I read and forgot last night while trying to get to sleep. And then a fucking earthquake came and toppled a thousand cell phone towers and trapped 900 high school students in school and if it's anything like the 1976 earthquake of a slightly lower Richter 240,000 people stand to die.
MOE: Did you also read how in Burma they are counting the survivors because it's easier than counting the dead? I guess the death toll there is supposed to reach 100,000...
MOE: But the Most Emailed story is this thought provoking Tom Friedman column.
MEGAN: That was last week, before the military decided that all the food was for them. So, I think we can safely assume that the total survival rate will be about equal to the members of the junta, the military and their families, since apparently everyone else is just supposed to die quietly and let the soldiers dump their bloated bodies in waterways so no one knows.
MEGAN: Fucking Tom Friedman.
8:55 AM
MOE:

That restriction has angered local government officials like Tin Win who are trying to help rebuild the lives of villagers. He twitched with rage as he described the rice the military gave him.

"They gave us four bags," he said. "The rice is rotten — even the pigs and dogs wouldn't eat it."

He said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had delivered good rice to the local military leaders last week but they kept it for themselves and distributed the waterlogged, musty rice. "I'm very angry," he said, adding an expletive to describe the military.

"The government told us that school must reopen June 1, if you have a schoolhouse or not," Myint Oo told his visitor. "'Teach under a tree if you have to,' they said."

When he began describing the devastation to the school and village, a portly man in a white T-shirt who also seemed to hold a position of power interrupted.

"Don't tell these foreigners anything," the man said.

Myint Oo replied that he wanted to talk to the visitors in the hope that they could help rebuild the village.

"They will send the facts to the world and show the weakness of the Myanmar government," said the man in the white shirt.

"This is not just a new generation, but a new kind of generation...In the omphalocentric process of self-construction and discovery," today's youth "stalks love like a wary hunter, but has no time or target — not even the mellowing Communists — for hate."

MEGAN: Maybe he can talk about how he held the Metro system's budget hostage until they agreed to spend more than a million dollars to change all the signage in the system to reflect the full name of National Airport.
MEGAN: But to guarantee his ability to fuck over the Republican Party and my ability to have something interesting to write about, I would totally make my first political donation to him.
MOE: No Peggy is totes the weird answer to Maureen Dowd. Her prose is kind of hilarious, like the way she seems to go inside a dark room and close her eyes and meditate and return with a Very. Melodramatic. Assessment. Of the feelings and attitudes governing the political awareness of the American populace. I should have Maria do a Best Of Peggy I think. And does McCain really need Bob Barr undermining his campaign when he's got RON PAUL undermining it already?
MEGAN: Scroll down, by the way, for the picture of them standing in front of the Eiffel Tower with a Ron Paul sign. Crazy ass motherfuckers.
MOE: Also: didn't two McCain advisers just step down after admitting to representing the Burmese junta? (That might lose Laura Bush's vote.) McCain is kind of a lousy subject right now.
MOE: Here we go.

Doug Davenport, the regional campaign manager for the mid-Atlantic states, founded the DCI Group's lobbying practice and oversaw the contract with Myanmar in 2002.
"Doug has tendered his resignation and we have accepted it," Jill Hazelbaker, McCain's communications director, wrote in a e-mail.
He joins former DCI Group CEO Doug Goodyear, who resigned yesterday from the post of convention CEO after Newsweek reported that DCI was paid more than $300,000 to represent Myanmar's ruling junta.

The Democratic front-runner's wife did not comment on other rival candidates for the party's nomination, but she has been sniping at Clinton since last summer. According to Obama sources, those public utterances do not reveal the extent of her hostility.

A procedural hearing on Fossella's drunken-driving arrest - which ultimately exposed his double life - is slated for a Virginia courtroom Monday.

MEGAN: Ah, that's the brilliant thing! When he got pulled over for running a red light drunk, his excuse was that he was on his way to a friend's house, after which he admitted he was going to see his sick kid.
MEGAN: Only his official kids were in NY with his wife. And, OMG, they've been having an affair since at least 2003? Five years? Dude, what the fuck. Even Kennedy got a divorce.
MOE: Even Prince Charles got a divorce! Dude did we learn anything over the weekend about this minister who officiated the Jenna wedding?
MEGAN: He's an Obama supporter who also does weddings?