MEGAN: Oh, hello there! How were your protests yesterday? We talked about spanking without you.

JASON: The protest was modestly-sized, but passionate. If you caught the story on Cavuto last night, I spoke to the same woman from the Mahoning Valley that he did, who was very nice in that she allowed me to ask her many silly questions, like if she was jealous of the attention John McCain gave the Georgians, and whether Cindy McCain, if she bought their tent city, would count each tent as a separate residence or if collectively, the tent city would be a single domicile.

MEGAN: Yeah, I don't normally watch Cavuto because I've normally got my head deep in my computer writing the news round-up for the end of the night, but she sounds nice!

JASON: She was very nice. So, okay, speaking of forays into the lives of working class women, we have Maureen Dowd this morning.

MEGAN: Oh, God, any segue that starts off that way normally makes me want to tear out my hair. What did she spew now?

JASON: Anna sent me a link to her column. And mind you, I usually consider someone forwarding me her columns as a type of assault. But this being Anna, I knew that it was important, dangerous work that needed to be done. So I'm reading it, and honestly? Through three paragraphs — which in Dowd-ese means "three hastily constructed sentence fragments" — she does okay. But then you get this:

"The Wall Street Journal reported that McCain was thinking about taking Palin to the U.N. General Assembly next week so she can shake hands with some heads of state. You can’t contract foreign policy experience like a rhinovirus. To paraphrase the sniffly Adelaide in “Guys and Dolls,” a poy-son could develop a cold war."

Fugue For Tinears! I mean, that's the op-ed version of being clouted with a ball peen hammer.

MEGAN: Honestly, if I wasn't wearing my glasses, I would have smacked myself upon reading that. Who says that? Who thinks that?!!

JASON: Maureen Dowd is JUST THE WORST. Murder your darlings, darling! The rhinovirus line was sufficient!

MEGAN: Well, speaking of the over-privileged...

JASON: Anyway, that fucking travesty was about Carly Fiorina. I sense that your taking it in that direction? Since we're on the subject of travesties?

MEGAN: No, actually, I wanted to talk about Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who Moe and I mocked last week for her horrendous editorial about elitism, and is now endorsing John McCain. Like, bitch went to the Democratic convention on the motherfucking platform committee, but she's endorsing John McCain this week. Because, as an elitist, she know elitism when she sees is and DESPITE WRITING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLATFORM she's going to vote for John McCain because Obama wasn't nice enough to her.

JASON: What a relief! I had thought that we might end up with Dischord Records releasing a ROTHCHILDS AGAINST ELITISM compilation disc or something! Let's talk elitism. Here's the lede from Portfolio's profile on Lynn:

"When 67-year-old British banking scion Sir Evelyn Rothschild first set eyes on 44-year-old Lynn Forester at the 1998 Bilderberg conference—the matchmaker was none other than Henry Kissinger—she was already a woman of major means."

I mean, wow. Kissinger and the Bilderberg conference come up RIGHT OFF THE BAT. So, you know going in that this is the woman who will cure us of our elitism.

MEGAN: I guess she really, really, really knows elitism. That's about the most amusingly gagable description of a meet-cute since I didn't read the New York Times wedding announcements last weekend. Also, the woman helped write the Democratic party's fucking platform, but because she's got a personal distaste for the candidate elected to represent and implement that platform, she's going to publicly support, campaign for and vote for the guy who represents and plans to implement the polar opposite.

JASON: What I see as the problem is that this person was allowed within a million miles of the Democratic party platform. They should be glad she turned into a self-lancing boil.

MEGAN: I mean, what I want to know is: what sections did she work on? I mean, obviously not the ones on energy, the environment, reproductive freedom, marriage equity, equal pay, women in the military, taxes, health care... so, what's left? Is there a section on wealthy baronesses?

MEGAN: Um, WHOA, our embassy in Yemen just got bombed. MSNBC says 16 people are dead so far. But no Americans so far.

JASON: Ten Yemeni civilians, though.

MEGAN: Well, since when did suicide bombers care about their own people? They have a political point to make about... something.

JASON: True. Reports say that snipers opened fire on the first responders, too. Another terrorist act brought to you by the people we will not go and fight.

MEGAN: That is, notably, the second attack we've faced in Yemen, in case anyone's forgotten.

JASON: There was a mortar attack on the Embassy earlier this year, as well.

MEGAN: Well, let's play newscasters and make our sad/serious faces now and quickly changes the subject back to something "sexy". Like Carly Fiorina.

JASON: Yes. We'll get a thorough dose of grandstanding from Senators McCain and Obama later.

MEGAN: And then we can talk about it again! So, let's talk about Carly Fiorina and her ego. Is it just me spending too many hours with Republicans, or do you recall a lot of times hearing that we needed someone to run this country more like a business? Like, say, Mitt Romney.

JASON: One of the hallmark arguments the GOP has made, IN MY LIFETIME, was that the U.S. of A. COULD BE RUN LIKE A BUSINESS!!!

MEGAN: Just not, apparently, with McCain or Palin at the helm.

JASON: Really? Should Carly Fucking Fiorina be lecturing ANYONE on how to run a business?

MEGAN: Hey, I am happy to let her spout off again McCain and Palin. Let's not stop her, please? She knows a lot, from personal experiences, about the kind of people that shouldn't be CEOs.

JASON: Yesterday, Andrea Mitchell was basically taunting her about her own golden parachute, even as John McCain is vowing to end the practice. (And don't ask me how the federal government achieves THAT.) And she said that with her it was different!

MEGAN: Well, of course hers was different.

JASON: ...that her severance package was decided for her, put to a vote. And that constituted real reform! Two things on this.

One: Yes, Carly. I am sure that there was a vocal faction of Hewlett Packard decision makers who were like: "You know what? We need to consider not giving her all these millions of dollars. Because we need to send a clear message to shareholders that we hired an incompetent woman to run this company. THAT WILL WORK."

Two: The process Fiorina describes is commonplace! That's how these golden parachutes get strapped to these morons' backs. These disgraced CEOs aren't, you know, actually PLUNDERING THEIR COMPANIES COFFERS WITH A SCIMITAR CLENCHED IN THEIR TEETH.

MEGAN: Also, it's all super-clubby up in there.

JASON: Not that John McCain could stop that, either! He had an ad up, exclaiming ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! And then three hours later, the government bails out AIG.

MEGAN: Last night, I seriously turned off the computer and TV, took a short nap and went to dinner and by the time I got there, the entire bar was watching the news of the AIG bailout — and I don't even live in NY! And it's not like golden parachutes aren't "voted" on, but they're "voted" on in the same way that North Koreans "vote" for Kim Jong Il.

JASON: Right! Minus the exciting visual of those adorable goosestepping lady soldiers! AND THEY ARE ADORABLE! I want to SQUEEZE those crazy ladies! Who says intractable fascism can't have a Cute Overload aspect to it?

MEGAN: I never did understand why dictatorships continue to allow goosestepping to remain alive.

JASON: Could you imagine having, like, a three-inch tall brigade of North Korean lady soldiers skipping all around your apartment. I would be like, OMGZ THAT IS TEH CUTENESS.

MEGAN: I think they should be at least 10 inches.

JASON: Jeezy creezy! Is the Dow already down 209 points today??

MEGAN: I love, by the way, that the NYSE was opened today by "Emeritus Senior Living." Where John McCain would retire, if he didn't have the right to die, senile and crapping his pants, in office. Sidenote: Bob Casey is on MSNBC right now and, um, man needs to wax that unibrow.

JASON: You know, credit John McCain. He has, to my knowledge, never crapped his pants. Yesterday, Carly crapped hers twice on national teevee.

MEGAN: See, I prefer to think of that sort of appearance as vomiting up the bile from her soul.

JASON: You won't be seeing her on teevee for a while, either.

MEGAN: Well, my days will no doubt be burdened by that.

JASON: More time for Empress Nancy Pfotenhauer. And Tucker Bounds! And now the Lady de Rothschild!

MOE: Yo sorry I'm late I had massive insomnia last night. What's going on? I feel like I read 759 different "think pieces" on the election last night.
MEGAN: Yeah, believe me, I tossed and turned for kind of a while last night and then woke up in the middle of the night and was up for a while. I think there are a ton of fucking think pieces out there because there's no actual news to report.
MOE: What do you mean? Obama totally went bowling! And drank Yuengling.
MEGAN: I'll guarantee that he's a better bowler than me. I once got a gutter ball in a bumper lane instead of hitting actual pins.
MOE: Okay, so I read the entire fucking Kelefa Sanneh piece on Jeremiah Wright in the New Yorker. I read the entire elegy to the Republican party in the Times Magazine. I read probably 28 pieces calling on Hillary Clinton to bow out of the campaign, about 25 of which came with the disclaimer "I know she won't but." Nora Ephron's may have been my favorite. Shit, now I can't find it.
MEGAN: I mean, I don't understand why everyone all of a sudden wants her to drop out except for the polls last week that show Democrats are all getting pissed enough at the other guy's people to vote for McCain, and thus also don't understand why the other guy's people would continue pissing off her people by calling on her to drop out.
MOE: She should drop out because, at this point, she's been beaten, and she's been beaten by a candidate who had a lot more to prove.
MEGAN: Well, but she's not quite beaten yet and she's bloodied him pretty damn well in the last couple of weeks.
MOE: She's bloodied herself worse on imaginary sniper fire
MEGAN: I mean, I just think that the calls all started because of the polls that show Nader taking votes from both of them and McCain beating either one of them, but that's a stupid reason. What she ought to do is Fire Mark Penn.
MEGAN: And then stop improving her negative rating
MEGAN: I mean, I guess I sort of wish it was over, but that's mostly because I'm fucking sick of talking and writing about it, but that's not really a good enough reason. And, also, calling for her to drop out is pissing off a lot of her supporters, which is worse than keeping going.
MOE: I dunno. I feel like a lot of her supporters are over it too. I mean, look, when was the last time we had a knockdown dragout with Sinister Rouge? Here, by the way, is the Nora Ephron piece.

She is me, and then again she's not. I used to love her and I no longer do, but unlike what usually happens when love dies, I still think about her far too much. When she tells a big lie, like her recent Bosnia episode, I can lose hours trying to figure out why. I mean, why? Was it one of those things that she'd said so often that she'd come to believe it? Was it a story that had worked in the past so she thought she'd gotten away with it? Did she honestly think that no one would rat her out? Does she not understand that if you're famous, there's almost nothing you do that someone doesn't have a picture of? I have no idea what the answer is to any of this because I'm not a liar and she is. (By the way, I don't think she was always a liar, the way some kids are born liars and never get over it. I think she was once a truthful person and her lying skills were forged in the early years of her marriage, forged in the crucible of Bill's infidelities and in her role as point person in dealing with them. This is what happens when you marry a narcissist: he spills the milk, you clean it up and your love grows. And then you end up a liar, just like him.)

Many conservative activists have become so dissatisfied with the party's heresies, particularly on immigration and government spending, that as Cole's staff took over, the committee's fund-raising pleas were being ignored and, on at least one occasion, returned in an envelope stuffed with feces.

"You go back to the Reagan years, and even before that, and we always had a three-legged stool: anti-Communism, anti-abortion and tax and spend," Dan Mattoon, the Republican lobbyist and former deputy chairman of Cole's committee, told me. "The first leg dropped off when the Berlin Wall fell, and after 9/11 we've tried to do the same thing with terrorism, but it's not as strong. The second leg, tax and spend, was pretty strong until George Bush. Then we had just one leg of the stool, which was social issues, and I think that you look at the makeup of the younger generation and there's more of a libertarian view on social issues." Cole says that the party's rhetoric on issues like gay marriage has cast Republicans as too reactionary for many suburban districts. "My problem on social issues is the tone — sometimes we have been too shrill, and that has alienated voters who might otherwise have joined us," he told me. The challenge, then, is finding a new generation of candidates who aren't.

"I don't need the nominee to win; I just need him to be competitive enough that we can win behind him in the places that should be ours," Cole said. "I need him to be Gerald Ford."

When I asked the House minority leader John Boehner how he assessed the committee's fund-raising so far, he told me: "It stinks. No other way to put it."

No. I'm thankful I got fired when I did, so that I didn't have to be associated with what they subsequently did.

McCain recently confessed in public that his grasp of economics is limited.Yeah. That's a great place to start from, isn't it?

• Oh what a surprise! Eliot Spitzer probably fucked the biggest whore in Washington, who may even have actually worked as a whore that whole time she was whoring. [Wonkette]
  
• The Alan Keyes of Muslims! [WSJ]
  
• Mark McKinnon is still planning on leaving the McCain campaign if Barack Obama is the nominee. Not that anyone thinks that has a chance of happening. [National Journal]
  
• Though it has at least as much of a chance as an Obama-Bob Casey ticket? [TNR]
  
• Burger King is trying to rebrand itself to look like a cool bar you might find at some sort of transport hub food court. I ask you, are you not looking at this prototype and thinking "messy anonymous airport hotel sex"? [WSJ]
  
• Nancy Pelosi has released a statement that boycotting the Olympics in China in protest to their violence against Tibetan protesters and, oh, I dunno, their blatant disregard for human rights and the environment, would be unfair because some athletes worked too hard to be ignored by their countrymen on television? [AP]

• Would you believe the SCIENTISTS have found a link between blood sugar and brain activity? Apparently it is hard to think when you are hungry. Fascinating! And you were wondering, why no Nobel nominees from North Korea? If anorexics are such perfectionists, how come so few have made Huge Intellectual contributions? Welllll, now you know. [Economist]
• The first Senator to call for Hillary to pull out of the race. [Wash Post]
• I want to have his babies every day...[NPR]
• An Indian women was beaten by an angry mob that accusing her of being a witch. [WSJ]

MEGAN: By Friday, I swear, it's like sheer force of will to drag ass out of bed.

MOE: seriously. I did that thing that I never do where I assumed it must be Saturday.
 
MEGAN: I was like allllllmost awake, and then I fell back asleep again.

MOE: Also, I feel like there's no Crappy hour that can beat yesterday's. Though I found Andy Armsberg's spare MySpace profile.

MEGAN: get through airport security.

MOE: Do you think that the Pentagon would have bought all that ammo from him if they had known that in October 2005 he said that

for the moment im basically just working and chilling with my boyz when im not, im looking for some hobbies like i keep saying im gonna go to the gym and i started playing football again which is definately my favorite sport. im one of those guys who needs to be entertained and having lots of fun all the time so if your also an undiagnosed case of ADD look me up.

MEGAN: No, I mean, I read that and it's no longer surprising that he was a military defense contractor.

MOE: I bet he totally sends text messages such as "I'll need someone to fuck around 11:45."
8:55 AM 
MEGAN: Or the one I sent you last week, which came from a defense contractor! "News flash: looking for a fuck tonight. That said, how are you?"
 
MOE: Oh right. NEWS FLASH.
Looking...for...a segue. What is in the news? Guess who they just had on Hannity last night?

MEGAN: A pirate?

MOE: This guy. I don't really know how to describe his worldview, except to say, "I'm really glad Fox gives equal time to all irrational, inexplicable and yet also hateful viewpoints such as

MEGAN: Oh, Christ, I watched his shit last week. Obama's a pimp? He's got a white mama and is thus is... evil. He's practically preaching like the evils of interracial relationships only from the other side of it. Wright's a total moderate by comparison.
OMG, my favorite headline this morning just popped up! "Dempsey to become Central Command chief"
  Sadly, it's not Patrick.
 
MOE: hahaha I guess we should talk about the Iraq today.
  It seems to be in the news.
And we never officially celebrated the fifth anniversary of the invasion.
  
Also under stuff we never did: get oil?
It looks like the evildoers control the oil territories.

MEGAN: Ah, well, than I guess suddenly the reason we're still there is now clear. Fuck "stopping" a civil war, we just need to wrest control of the taps from whomever hates us and has control.

MOE: Speaking of do you ever think about the Middle East when you are squeezing your pores? Because I actually wrote about how I do that yesterday, and now I am referencing it again, and I bet if I consulted my Facebook Horoscope "Intellect" rating it would be 3% right now, and that is exactly where I will probably click next. But maybe in the name of defying Astrological Determinism I should read about Basra.
  Oh fuck, haha, speaking of my diagnosed case of ADD, I meant to make this about Bob Casey endorsing Obama.

MEGAN: I did read that! I don't squeeze my pores, I use one of those Tweezerman things I showed you and I usually do it to relax and focus, yes. But I'm not normally focusing on the Middle East.
  
Oh, Bob Casey.
 
MOE: And also, have some sort of conversation that I am going to sound soooooo credible having right now re the fact that Obama is smarter and better informed on pretty much every issue than John McCain and that could make for an amazing campaign.

MEGAN: Does anyone actually question whether Obama is smart, or smarter than McCain? McCain's never been known as a hyperintellectual Senator, just one with good staff.
Also, Bob Casey is totally an Obamublican, even though he's a Democrat. Congrats, Pennsylvania, on electing an anti-choice Democrat to office. No worries about Supreme Court picks or abortion politics there!

MOE: I think McCain is smart. He's just the "talker" kind of smart. He is that guy who will date you on the basis of the fact that you get his jokes and then six months will pass and he will have this weird moment where he starts actually listening to you and goes, "Huh. You kind of have a point there, kid!"
I didn't know that Iraq had finally returned to its prewar level of oil production, to return the subject to my pores.

MEGAN: I totally did a Body Shop tea tree oil mask last night to cut my oil production.

MOE: Who bought oil from Saddam Hussein prewar? Anyway, whatever you know, when capitalism gives up on Iraq I think we know who's won.

"You'll see some limited initiatives to get a foothold in the country," said David Kirsch of PFC Energy, a Washington-based consulting firm. "What you are not going to see though, we estimate, in the next 10 years are the conditions that allow you to do the really significant type of investments that could let Iraq hit its geologic potential of six million barrels per day."

MEGAN: But President Bush told me yesterday that Iraq is negotiating its entry into the WTO, so everything will totes be okay.

s

MOE: Anyway, back to Obama for a second. Forgetting my own personal hard-on for the guy, he does an amazing thing when he is talking to capitalists, and that is he discusses economic policy in a way that doesn't even remotely sound like populist rhetoric. I doubt his interview with Maria Bartiromo will be sound-bitten anywhere or repurposed into campaign propaganda. He made her look like an idiot. He gave a little chuckle when she said, "But! Small business! They are WORRIED! That you're a SOCIALIST!" and he said something very telling about how they say they're worried when these surveys get taken because they're taken by local Chambers of commerce after said chambers of commerce hold luncheons and get them worried, systematically, every time there's a minimum wage increase on the table or whathaveyou, and how the sky never falls and they're losing their credibility. I wonder if he was referring to Chicago, where I vaguely recall some economic development project that demanded all employees get paid $10 an hour? Anyway, whatever. He sounded intelligent and sober and she sounded reflexive and ideological.

MEGAN: Oh, Christ, I ALSO love how everyones that thinks there should be more government intervention in the economy to prevent market failures is a Socialist right up until Wall Street wants the Fed to pony up a gazillion dollars to save their asses from the market failures of their own making.
Also, my only props to the Money Honey, having just seen her on TV on Sunday for the first time in a while, is that she seems to be Botox-less. You go, Maria. Be your insane market-will-solve-all hotness without knives or shots.

MOE: He also pointed out that he wasn't an ideologue. Anyway, not to babble on about this but an undecided reader saw him give a speech yesterday and wrote me an email complimenting me on "placing my bets" with him. Lol.

he gave a brief speech and then spent about an hour or so answering questions from the audience. a lot of the questions had to do with his campaign. he was very forthcoming about the past and future challenges of his candidacy, concerns that he wouldnt be able to get the necessary funding or establishment support, that he was too white or (more recently) too black, too professorial or too rhetorical, etc., etc. he acknowledged that the main challenge in the general election will be overcoming concerns whether he has the right temperament to lead the nation in a time of crisis. he conceded that a lot of people will be taking a leap of faith to put a first-term african-american senator with a name like barack hussein obama into the white house at a time like this. he got into specifics on a couple of items, e.g., energy, funding for veterans, general economic malaise, phased (and responsible) withdrawal from iraq (with which i tend to disagree), the need to engage iran (with apt comparisons to jfk-krushchev, reagan-gorby, etc.). the thing is this: there's all this meta-stuff about his campaign that a guy like me can get caught up in, but when it comes down to it, the fact is that he is a convincing candidate.

MEGAN: Oh, no, honey, don't worry! Paulson says that the President's stimulus package will totes create 600,000 jobs.
 
MOE: Oh yes. And Hillary is still around. Look! It is my girlfriend Peggy!

That's what the Bosnia story was about. Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac — and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren't, if she thought what she was saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought — either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual).

MOE: Meh, I think the "You have to lie and be Machiavellian and speak in poll-tested half-truths and appeal to statistically-proven demographic subniches to get anything done in this terrible cynical political world" is a total cop-out. That said, I regularly lie about certain things, I am sure. Like I think I say that I am 5'7 even though I am probably just 5'6.5 because everyone lies about their height. Which reminds me of that thing about the North Koreans and how they're not tall enough.

MEGAN: I dunno, all candidates talk like that. Obama probably talks like that. Bush promised no more wars to prevent other countries civil wars and no more nation-building. The problem is that most Americans don't want to hear the truth, they want to hear what they want the truth to be.

5 minutes

MOE: No, you know what? I think that's the thing. I do think that this country has gotten to the point where they're like, "NO. Just give me the diagnosis. Tell me. Don't fuck around." And Obama is the guy who's like "hard work and positive thinking and some surgery to remove malignant tumors here and there and we just might beat this thing" and McCain is like "grit your teeth and give me all the radiation I can take cause I can TAKE IT! I owe it to my buddies!" Oh god, it's 9:44 and we still haven't discussed Bob Casey.

MEGAN: Bob Casey endorsed Obama. He's not charismatic or particularly popular.
  
But he is a superdelegate, which Obama needs and Clinton needs to keep him from getting.

MOE: Bob Casey is a pro-life Catholic who unseated Rick Santorum by a beautiful 20 point margin in which I am pleased to report I was part. Bob Casey is not someone with the clout or the machine of someone like an Ed Rendell or even a Mike Nutter, but he is someone with a different kind of influence because of that. Can you think of another openly pro-life Obama supporter? I think that goes over big with a lot of Pennsylvanians. Apparently the state is 30% catholic. I'm actually surprised that's not higher. Related: why does it seem like everyone is from Pennsylvania originally? Not just SarahMC.

MEGAN: It's the 6th most populous state, and yet the economy isn't that great so people go elsewhere?
 
MOE: Whoa, Condi addressed the fact that she is black? WTF.

MEGAN: Wow, and she didn't even crap on affirmative action.