[Sydney, October 27. Image via Getty]

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - OCTOBER 27: Australian women, including the Prime Minster's wife Therese Rein and Leader of the Opposition's wife Lucy Turnbull gather to show support for the freedom of Burmese democracy figure Aung San Suu Kyi at the Sydney Opera House forecourt on October 27, 2009 in Sydney, Australia. Suu Kyi was elected Prime Minister of Myanmar,, as leader of the winning National League for Democracy party, in the 1990 elections, but was subsequently detented by the military junta, preventing her from assuming office. She has been under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years, with the latest period being since 11 August 2009 for a further 18 months. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

• A Texas judge has ruled that a same-sex couple should be able to get a divorce in Texas, even though the state does not recognize gay marriage. Although it is too early to tell what this will mean for human rights in Texas, the couple is "ecstatic" at the news. •  Allergan Inc., makers of Botox, have filed a lawsuit against federal health officials, which alleges that the government violated their free-speech rights by barring them from distributing information about the antiwrinkle injections. •  Grab your babies, because Today is the Synchronized Worldwide Breastfeed. The event started in the Philippines, with breastfeeding advocate Elvira Henares-Esguerra. •  Lauren Book, a survivor of sexual abuse, once lobbied for stricter laws governing paroled sex offenders. However, she recently realized that the laws she worked so hard to have passed may have backfired, leaving hundreds of sex offenders in such deplorable living conditions that they might just get "desperate" enough to offend again. •  French PM Francois Fillon said today that he is considering enforced chemical castration for sex offenders. France currently allows the use of chemical castration, but only with the consent of the prisoner. •  Patriza D'Addario went on Italian television to tell her side of the whole Silvio Berlusconi sex scandal story. She says Berlusconi knew she was an escort when he slept with her, and that his Rome residence "seemed like a harem." • 

[Mandalay, September 28. Image via Getty]

A girl sits on the steps on the top of Mandalay hill in front of a statue of the Buddha in Mandalay on September 28, 2009. Myanmar marks the two-year anniversary of the ruling junta's violent crackdown on Buddhist monks who led mass street protests. At least 31 people were killed in the 2007 crackdown which led to stepped up Western sanctions on military-run Myanmar. AFP PHOTO / EDISON (Photo credit should read EDISON/AFP/Getty Images)

When National Geographic first ran images of the Padaung, it was anthropological gawking - but the "exotic women" whose collarbones had been depressed from early childhood with heavy brass rings, had at least been photographed on their own turf. Now, as refugees from devastated, war-torn Burma, they're a popular tourist attraction in neighboring Thailand - brought in by entrepreneurs who keep them in an artificial village they're not allowed to leave. And, as the Washington Post's Amit R. Paley found, it's a sad and complex situation.

While many consider this a human rights violation so heinous that more scrupulous travel companies refuse to sponsor tours to their village, others are more pragmatic: for the refugees, some defenders - and, indeed, villagers themselves- claim, it's better than the dangers of Burma, and gives them a chance to make money by selling handicrafts to tourists or charging for photographs. Said the Seattle PI's Denis Gray when he visited their compound a decade ago, "Economically it's a virtually perfect arrangement. Everyone gets a cut — the once impoverished Padaung, Thai businessmen and government tax collectors, even a rebel group that uses the money to finance its war with the military regime in Burma."

Morally, it's far from perfect. Whatever the villagers' feelings about the situation, they're clearly being exploited. Thailand, which has given them asylum, is profiting. And the Tales of Asia blog points out that the practice is actually in violation of UN High Commission for Refugees guidelines, which prohibits putting refugees "on display." While no one whom the Post's Paley spoke to claimed to be ill-treated, the facts are still shocking.

"Why do we wear the rings?" said Mamombee, 52, whose neck seemed particularly elongated. "We do it to put on a show for the foreigners and tourists!" I couldn't tell if she was joking...There were no guards around, and it did not look to me as if anyone would physically stop the women from leaving. When I asked how they had arrived at this village, they said a man named U Dee, whom they referred to as "the middleman," first began bringing Padaung to the spot about three years ago. There are now about 50 families there, including some from a tribe known as "the long ears" because they stretch their lower earlobes by wearing enormous rings.Some families said they were paid about $45 a month, while others were given a sack of rice. One orphan girl said she was not paid at all. All the women and girls tried to raise extra money by selling trinkets or charging money to be photographed. The women are not allowed to leave the one-acre village. Groceries and other supplies are brought in by motorcycle every day. "We have to stay with the middleman," Mamombee said. "If I leave, he might call immigration."

The issue of the body modification rings themselves - which many regard as mutilation, imposed on girls when they're too young to object - is controversial anyway, but becomes more so when the suspicion intrudes that the need for tourism may encourage the practice. As Gray explains,

Tourism has, at least for the time being, preserved a custom that had begun to disappear as the Padaung came into contact with the outside world.Traditionally, only Padaung girls born on a Wednesday of a full moon were destined to have their necks fitted with the coils, but now other youngsters are enlisted to meet the tourist demand...Only initial discomfort is reported after the coils are set and as the distance from ear lobe to collar bone lengthens to as much as 10 inches, more than double the average. The only danger posed is if the coils are removed. Suffocation could result since the neck muscles are so weak they cannot support the head.

It may be true that as refugees the Padaung would have limited options. Perhaps, given the choice, many of them would still opt to work the tourist trade; we can't know. But choice is the operative word: without that, it's a poor sort of asylum. And any tourists who thinks they're observing tradition should know they're seeing something far more modern - but at the same time, just as sadly old as commerce and exploitation.

A Village, Or A Zoo? [Washington Post]
The Padaung Longnecks…[TalesofAsia]
Padaung 'Giraffe Women' [Seattle PI]

[Thai/Myanmar border, June 18. Image via Getty]

A Karen refugee with two legs missing lights up her pipe next to a sleeping baby under a temporary shelter on the Thai-Myanmar border at the Safe Haven orphanage 136 km north of Mae Sot on June 18, 2009. Around 40 children from an orphanage in Myanmar and around 60 people arrived to the Safe Heaven orphanage 2 weeks ago after they fled Myanmar north eastern Karen state. June 20 is world refugee day, around 42 million uproted people around the world are still waiting to go home. AFP PHOTO / NICOLAS ASFOURI (Photo credit should read NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images)

[Tokyo, June 19. Image via Getty]

A Myanmar resident in Japan holds a poster of Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi beside buddhist monks participating in a demonstration demanding the release of Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, at the United Nation University in Tokyo on June 19, 2009. The protest was held on the day marking Suu Kyi's 64th birthday. AFP PHOTO / TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA (Photo credit should read TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images)

Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung San, a revolutionary who helped Burma win its independence from Britain ("Burma" is the name used by opposition groups to refer to the country now officially known as Myanmar). She has spent 13 of the last 19 years in some form of custody, due to her pro-democracy activism and helped found the National League for Democracy, which won in a landslide in Burma's 1990 general election (the ruling military junta nullified the results). Suu Kyi, who was voted Prime Minister, was already under house arrest at the time, for giving speeches and campaigning for democracy after a ban on political gatherings. Her continued nonviolent campaigning won her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

The latest change in Suu Kyi's status comes as a result of the American John William Yettaw, who reportedly swam across a lake, snuck into Suu Kyi's home, and stayed there for two days. He had tried to visit her once before, in 2008; both times, she told him to leave, but this time he refused. Yettaw's stepson says he "is harmless and not politically motivated in any way." No one knows what does motivate him, but Suu Kyi's lawyer Kyi Win doesn't much care. "Everyone is very angry with this wretched American. He is the cause of all these problems," he said. "He's a fool."

Burma's junta, which took power in 1988 after a bloody uprising, says that by allowing Yettaw's visit Suu Kyi violated Article 22 of the Law Safeguarding the State from the Danger of Subversionists (aka Scary Totalitarian Rule No. 1). The National League for Democracy, however, says she has violated no law. Many speculate that Yettaw's intrusion is merely an excuse for the junta to extend this particular round of detention for Suu Kyi, which began in 2003. Sein Win, Prime Minister of Burma's opposition government-in-exile, said, "It is nothing more than a political ploy to hoodwink the international community so that it can keep (Suu Kyi) under lock and key while the military maneuvers its way to election victory on 2010."

Aung San Suu Kyi To Be Put On Trial [Guardian]
3RD: Myanmar's Suu Kyi Charged Over Detained American's Visit [Breitbart]
Suu Kyi To Stand Trial Again Over US Visitor [Independent]
Suu Kyi Charged With Violating House Arrest [Independent]

• House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, whose fellow Republicans have been critical of Obama's social calendar, skipped watching Tuesday's Obama presser to see the Britney Spears concert. Someone made him, y'all. [Think Progress, Huffington Post]

• Actor, former Senator and epic fail of a Presidential candidate Fred Thompson is brave enough to say that he wants Obama's economic policies to fail because he doesn't like them. Not that he doesn't want them to pass, he just wants them all to fuck up the economy worse so Republican ideology can be proved right. Americans can suffer longer to give Freddo another chance in 2012. [Raw Story]
• Speaking of 2012, Sarah Palin is not polling in Iowa yet. Yet. [Iowa Independent]
• Hillary Clinton admitted that your little weed habit is the cause of a lot of death and destruction in Mexico, so you might want to skip saying, "But it's not hurting anyone," this weekend. [Washington Post]
• One of her dudes met with Burma's foreign minister as part of the review of what to do about Burma since sanctions are an entirely ineffective foreign policy strategy. We're still not sending anyone to Cuba, though. [Washington Post]
• The AIG execs in Britain are still not giving their bonuses back, and they're asking the British government to investigate whether New York Attorney General Andrew "Shucking And Jiving Is Not A Racist Term" Cuomo is actually attempting to extort the money out of them by threatening to name them. [Reuters]
• Other New York lawmakers are set to do actual work for actual New Yorkers and repeal the Rockefeller-era drug laws that filled New York prisons with drug abusers and first-time, non-violent offenders. [NY Times]
• FBI Director Robert S. Mueller would like his delicious spying privileges renewed, please. [Washington Post]
• The U.S. Postal Service is going broke delivering you credit card applications you no longer qualify for. [Huffington Post]
• A rash of European lit majors laughed themselves nearly to death because of the following video. You've been warned. [Politico]

cMOE: Dude I don't want to forget this so I'm just showing you now. From Dick Morris's column on how McCain can beat Obama:

If the GOP nominee were Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, independents and Democrats might not vote Republican even if they became convinced that Obama is some kind of sleeper agent sent to charm and conquer our democracy.

MOE: um no kidding!
MEGAN: Why doesn't Dick Morris go back to sucking prostitutes' toes and leave the rest of us alone. Have you seen his teeth? He ain't stopped sucking stanky feet yet.

MOE: So there is too much to write about today but anyway Iran is still building a nuclear program, treaties be damned and we can't do anything about it, Burma is still letting its people die and Asian governments won't do anything about it, Hugo Chavez is supporting FARC and by any standard probably now qualifies for our state sponsors of terror list but we probably shouldn't give him the satisfaction, and now they're saying it's the end of American Superpower. For realz?!
MEGAN: Wait, wait! The NY Times is reporting this morning that Myanmar/Burma is going to let ASEAN help. I'm skeptical but maybe they actually will?

MOE: Ah, so their "soft approach" did work!

In a clear departure from the usually secretive style of the military junta, state television in Myanmar on Sunday showed video of the leader, Senior General Than Shwe, touring a refugee camp, checking supplies, patting the heads of babies and shaking hands with survivors. Some of the cyclone victims, surrounded by neat rows of blue tents, clasped their hands and bowed as the general and other senior military officials walked by.

MOE:

"Are we going to continue to cover the earthquake?" the Guangzhou-based reporter asked in an instant message to his editor, a day after China's deadliest earthquake in three decades struck Sichuan province."Of course," replied the editor, surnamed Yang. "Why not?"
Then, the reporter said, he forwarded to his boss the text of the latest edict from the propaganda department of the Communist Party Central Committee, ordering domestic news media not to send any more journalists to Sichuan.
Yang wrote back, "If everyone pays no attention to this, then it won't really be a ban."

MEGAN: Oh, she's probably still under house arrest. Like the regime wants to allow her ot be showed doing good work?
MOE: 40 years of mind control, propaganda, a string of incomprehensible, and incomprehensibly destructive political campaigns combined with severe rationing and poverty followed by 15 years of steady marginal increases in living standards and the appearance of openness will...do that to a citizenry!

MOE: I guess we should talk about how the crowd that showed up for Obama was like 1/8 the population of Portland? And maybe we should talk about how tiny his advance for Dreams From My Father was?
MOE: Oh and how a place as shit poor as Yemen manages to hide a guy with a $5 million price on his head. And also we should talk about oil prices. And McCain's continued purge of his aides who love lobbyists, which is getting like New York politicos with whores. And Anthony Shahid's fucking depressing story on Lebanon.

MEGAN: Ok, well, I can speak to the continued purge of lobbyists. Because there's one guy who isn't getting out. He's McCain's Mark Penn only potentially slightly less stupid. He's practically consolidating power in the campaign by getting rid of the other guys with lobbying ties, so that in November-January when clients are looking for someone with a good relationship to McCain that hasn't been accused of fucking him, he's the only one left. It's all very wonderfully Machiavellian.

MEGAN: Also, I think it's fair to say that Republican lobbyists understand the least about why people think they're shills out to destroy America and don't love McCain that much anyway, so it probably never occurred to anyone that it might be a teeny tiny problem to the electorate that the guy writing McCain's energy policy was an active lobbyist for energy companies. Because, hey, that's how this Administration has run things for 8 years anyway.
9:15 AM
MEGAN: As for the Yemen thing, it's actually a little funny because here, more and more people are tipping off their neighbors to pay their electric bills and shit and the economy goes into the toilet. So either the Yemenis are more loyal, or we're just that more desperate? Either way, my position has always been that I would totally turn in criminals for money, which is probably why my friends are all nerdy-upstanding types. One year at college there was a $1200 reward for a serial fire alarm puller and I was dying to know who it was because that was like, half of the money I'd make all semester otherwise.

MOE: Which reminds me of a point that I hope that Obama can make fairly. Re the "eight more years" thing. I think anyone who goes out of his way to say that a McCain administration would be "another eight years of the same" is doing a disservice to history. I think it's safe to say it would be historically impossible for another Administration to match this administration's singleminded dedication to the pursuit the interests of such a tiny group of corrupt people in all blatant disregard of democracy. I think we would be ill-advised to cheapen George W. Bush's "Worst President Ever" stain that way. No matter what happens in the general election January 20 will be a relatively good day for this country.
MOE: And regarding Yemen, I think it's safe to say we are less desperate.

MOE: And don't let me forget to bring up this fucking depressing story on the end of the era of cooperation between First and Third World countries that SOMEHOW begat the Green Revolution on the basis of a basic shared interest in the end of human suffering and not ADM profit margins.
MEGAN: Um, I don't thing McCain will be bad in the same way, but I think he's spent the last 8 years selling his soul to the Rovian devils in order to secure the nomination, and that doesn't make me particularly happy. There won't be a ton of turnover in terms of the kinds of people in middle management and shit because they're all working on his campaign and will be "owed"
MOE: This is pretty stark.

Adjusted for inflation, the World Bank cut its agricultural lending to $2 billion in 2004 from $7.7 billion in 1980.

MOE: Well, but what does McCain need with the Rovian devils now? Karl Rove is dispensing him free advice via his various punditry positions now.
MOE: There is just something that chills me about the "eight more years" refrain.

MEGAN: Well, and let's not forget that part of the problem with the IRRI's budget and people not working there is the fact that they were a proponent of biotechnology to get certain properties out of rice (salinity resistance, vitamins) that simply could not be bred in by convention means, and they were shit on by the world and the environmental movement, targeted for eco-terrorism and a lot of their developed-world money dried up over it, even though the Gold Rice project could've had serious benefits for the malnourished people of the world. I kept waiting for the article to mention that and it didn't.
MOE: Fuckin ecoterrorists. Anyway here we see shades of the pharmaceutical industry.

The insect is not a new problem. In the 1960s, the rice institute, nestled between jungle and the bustling town of Los Ba os, pioneered ways to help farmers grow two and even three crops a season, instead of one.

MOE: You talk to guys who develop drugs at pharmaceutical companies and they think it's absolutely shameful that if they want a drug to come to market these days they have to go to work on the next generation of lipitor or abilify or the drug that finally cures metabolic syndrome when there are still so many infectious diseases to be cured. At one point there was a Nature article suggesting the industry establish a non-profit pharmaceutical company to address diseases whose cures would not be money makers. The same should go for agriculture, you'd think. I don't really understand why all the philanthropy targeted at making life-improving technology more available to the third world seems to focus on hand-cranked laptops and stuff like that.

MEGAN: I think it's because a lot of philanthropy is corporate, it's designed to make companies look good to their consumers and stock holders, but those decisions are made by people within the company. So, of course that's the kind of corporate philanthropy they would engage in. And the pharmaceutical companies will pay tons of money to run those Prescription Partnership for America commercials and send out the buses and take a hit on giving medicines to a small subset of people who can't afford it rather than risk price controls, and they'll give away some AIDS medications in developing countries to keep patent rights.
9:35 AM
MEGAN: And Monsanto will spend millions of dollars spraying RoundUp on farmers fields to see if they're cheating on licensing rather than donating to the IRRI or developing drought-resistant wheat or something.
MEGAN: And everyone will give Bill Gates $1 million to research a cure for malaria or AIDS or whatever and claim that they're doing great shit and then go back to making money.
MEGAN: Anyway, if we're going to take today to be depressed about injustice, how about if you're taking medical marijuana while waiting for a transplant, you're pretty much not eligible for the transplant anymore?
MOE: Well I actually have a better answer to my own question that is not QUITE as cynical. The culture of Silicon Valley and the rapidness of the wealth creation that's happened there, the "open source-ness" of ideals, the existence of Microsoft monopolistic practices as a sort of anti-standard...the newness...the fact that the scientists in the case of the technology industry WERE the business founders and ARE the wealth holders...this swirl of factors makes electrical engineers and software engineers more idealistic and philanthropic I think. Whereas in pharmaceuticals and agriculture a lot of the scientific talent is still being managed by corporate shareholder-driven assholes because the barriers to entry are so much higher.
MEGAN: So, geeks think computers really can save the world, and everyone else is just faking it like I said? I'd buy that in moderation.
MOE: The thing is that: there are certain classes of people you might to run their businesses more ethically, less greedily...more thoughtfully...Hasidic-founded Kosher agriprocessing plants are no longer among them. (Did you read this story?) (Holy shit.)

MEGAN: I would be more surprised and outraged that this Administration is targeting illegal immigrants for arrest and deportation and doing virtually nothing to the management that hires them if I hadn't been living in this country for 30 years, probably.
MEGAN: And/or hadn't read that series in the WaPo last week about how unethically and illegally we treat supposedly-illegal immigrants while in custody.
MOE: And on that note I'll leave you with this from George Packer's New Yorker piece on conservatism:

MOE:

Nixon was coldly mixing and pouring volatile passions. Although he was careful to renounce the extreme fringe of Birchites and racists, his means to power eventually became the end. Buchanan gave me a copy of a seven-page confidential memorandum—"A little raw for today," he warned—that he had written for Nixon in 1971, under the heading "Dividing the Democrats." Drawn up with an acute understanding of the fragilities and fault lines in "the Old Roosevelt Coalition," it recommended that the White House "exacerbate the ideological division" between the Old and New Left by praising Democrats who supported any of Nixon's policies; highlight "the elitism and quasi-anti-Americanism of the National Democratic Party"; nominate for the Supreme Court a Southern strict constructionist who would divide Democrats regionally; use abortion and parochial-school aid to deepen the split between Catholics and social liberals; elicit white working-class support with tax relief and denunciations of welfare.

Finally, the memo recommended exploiting racial tensions among Democrats. "Bumper stickers calling for black Presidential and especially Vice-Presidential candidates should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country," Buchanan wrote. "We should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two, at least at the Democratic National Convention." Such gambits, he added, could "cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half."

MOE: I'll be back in 10. If you have any ideas about what the fuck we should talk about (besides IT'S FRIDAY) I would be stoked
MEGAN: This?
MOE: I actually did read that. It reminded me of BangieB.
8:30 AM
MEGAN: Oh. My. God. Apparently, the New Kids on the Block are performing live at Rockefeller Center today?
MEGAN: Right the fuck now!
8:40 AM
MEGAN: This may be the first time I've ever seen this many women our age in one place since I went to see the anniversary of Dirty Dancing. Also, there's no "background" track and they, um, kind of suck and are playing a medley. No, I take it back, Joey's pretty good. The background dancers outfits were pretty inexplicable except that they looked like they were from when NKOTB was popular. [This mini recap provided possibly solely for the benefit of my childhood friend Caroline]
MEGAN: Wow, Marky Mark is the much more talented brother.
MOE: Um understatement sorta? Although did you ever see that VH1 special where Donny was talking about how he thought he was Liberace? It was kind of priceless.
MEGAN: No, but now I totally want to. Also, that was 2.5 minutes of my life I will never get back.
MEGAN: Ok, so, other serious stuff? The people that owe the copyright to Curious George are going to due over those monkey T-shirts.
MOE: To due?
MOE: haha
MOE: Kidding!
MOE: Sorry I'm still trying to locate my keys.
MEGAN:

"We find it offensive and obviously utterly out of keeping with the value Curious George represents," said spokesman Rick Blake. "We're monitoring the situation and weighing our options with respect to legal action."

The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, "Republicans Stunned by Loss in Mississippi." It was about the eight-point drubbing the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second thought: Most party leaders in Washington are stupid - detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in '78 or '82 or '94.

They never guessed, back in '86, how government would pay off! They didn't know they'd stay! They came to make a difference and wound up with their butts in the butter. But affluence detaches, and in time skews thinking. It gives you the illusion you're safe, that everyone else is.

The party, Mr. Davis told me, is "an airplane flying right into a mountain."

Could the party pivot from the president? I spoke this week to Clarke Reed of Mississippi, one of the great architects of resurgent Republicanism in the South...Is the Republican solid South over?
"Yeah. Oh yeah." He said, "I eat lunch every day at Buck's Cafe. Obama's picture is all over the wall."

• George W. Bush is in Israel right now where he equated Obama with Hitler over his suggestion that he meet with Ahmadinejad. I guess in Israel they have to smile when he talks but Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik doesn't look like her heart is in it. [Wash Post]
  
• Joe Biden and most Democrats not named Joseph Lieberman rejected and denounced Bush's "bullshit"/"malarkey." [Politico]
  
• Oh wait, but the Bushes were actually great friends with the Nazis. So maybe he meant the Hitler thing as a compliment? [Guardian]
  
• (Dear Jews: Just remember, no one forgets what they learned at summer camp!)

• And what does the presumptive nominee of the political party equivalent of bad dog food have to say about the idiotic musings of the ignorant shit who not only most likely laid waste his own chances of being elected president but also did more in eight years to undermine democracy, world peace and stability than anyone who had ever held the office? Yeah, John McCain, you are an asshole. [Wonkette]
• "If the fear of Baghdad and Falluja is what keeps foreign powers from saving huge numbers of Burmese from their own government's callousness, that will be one more tragic consequence of the Iraq war." [New Yorker]
• I've been meaning to compile some fave Moments In Schlafly in honor of the honorary degree she's receiving tomorrow so...you know where to tip me. [TNR]

MEGAN: So, want to talk a little about the hotness quotient of Obama and Edwards on stage together? Because it was hot. I actually watched the speech, and usually I just listen while typing on my computer but Edwards looked so damn cute. He had this look on his face when he got on stage like, whoa, this is a big rally and these people are screaming and I'm not used to it but I think I like it.

MOE: Yeah, I think I sufficiently reveled in that yesterday evening. Apparently it cut off a discussion of my friend Ben's book on NPR. I'd love to hear what Elizabeth has to say though. It's so crazy to think that they've been this political partnership for his entire career and they can't see eye-to-eye on this one. Was that 41-point gap in West Virginia what finally dragged him in? I've been reading, like, other stuff this morning.

MEGAN: I'm not sure why she's not on board except that maybe she really likes Hillary Clinton more than Obama? But someone other than me hit the nail on the head yesterday — if he waited any longer, he wouldn't have been any big deal to the campaign, and I think he wanted it to be high profile when he did do it. I mean, he did it in Michigan, so it's a way to endorse that, in his mind, doesn't affect the remaining primaries.

MOE: For instance by some achievement of sheer "clicking on new tabs" fatigue I got through Matt Bai's epic Times Magazine cover story on John McCain's foreign policy beliefs. I also read most of this profile of his wingman/ghostwriter Mark Salter in today's Journal. Here is what I learned: some people think John McCain doesn't hate war enough because the whole time they were romping around the country trying in vain to tell the difference between VC from "South Vietnamese civilian ally" he was at torture camp learning to channeling his hate for, to paraphrase Glenn Beck, all those small people who were different from him.
MEGAN: Ah, yes, torture makes you love the war, check.
MOE: But Matt Bai seems to think he learned his foreign policy in...academia! At the National War College after he got home from torture camp. He looks at David Petreaus as the modern-day Creighton Abrams, who John McCain thinks might have won the war if they hadn't spent the first fifteen years or whatever fucking it up.
MOE:

"It's a little bit eerily reminiscent, in that search-and-destroy is basically the same tactic that Rumsfeld, Casey, Sanchez, et al. employed," McCain told me, referring to George Casey and Ricardo Sanchez, the two previous generals to command coalition forces in Iraq. "Go out, kill bad people and then go back to base. That's basically what search-and-destroy was. We obviously failed to learn that lesson in history." In McCain's war, then, David Petraeus, the more innovative general who took over in 2007, is now playing the part of Abrams, pursuing a winning strategy that needs only the patience of the American people and their government to ultimately succeed.

MEGAN: I think I'm more of a pessimist about human nature than you in general.
MOE: Like, I think you genearlly have to be really poor and really bored.
MOE: Well you know how the astrology works on that.
MEGAN: So, since we're not really poor by world standards, does that mean the US is really bored?
MOE: Well, who are most of our homicide victims/perpetrators? They're not the plutocracy, you know?
MEGAN: Well, but the ones who make the decisions about going to war are...
MOE: They're the disposables generally. I mean, I've covered cops. And yeah, there's a lot of boredom there.
MOE: Well sure. I mean, remember how it used to thrill Rumsfeld to say the word "kill"?
MEGAN: Yeah, I can see that. I thought about being a cop for a while, but then I would've had to have gotten into really good shape or something. Plus I don't like wearing a uniform and my parents didn't think someone with my temperment should have a gun on them.
MEGAN: Do you remember how the dude refused to have a chair in his office? Craaaazy dude.
MOE: I mean, that's another thing. Our troops: 4,000 have died. According to this Forbes story the national homicide rate was 5.7 per 100,000 people in 2006, and that's probably risen slightly. How many is that? I can't do math. Meanwhile a million Iraqis have died since the war began, and a lot of that has been us — not generally Haditha or Eggnog massacres but just basically air strikes and shit, but a lot of that has also been sectarian violence, and that is only exacerbated when people have no money, no job, a ton of fear, and shit all to do.

MEGAN: It's like 15,000 people, given the population of 280 million, I think, but I suck at math when hungover.
MOE: Economic development, as much as I like to say "yeah fuck that whole scam", can be a very positive thing. That said — god this is a depressing IM — as the this story about how the dearth of Good Samaritans and/or any sort of civil society in China is kind of part of the reason a government can't really rely on economic development alone.
MOE:

For the first few hours, Mr. Deng called for help. He spoke from under a deep pile of broken concrete slabs to his mother and his wife, Qin Ke. "I told him I would get him out," says Ms. Qin, whose legs were gashed as she dug in the debris. "But he said he was too badly hurt. He said he wouldn't make it. He told me not to wait for him." Overwhelmed by the scale of the damage, China's emergency workers have engaged in triage, focusing resources on flattened schools and other places with large concentrations of casualties. That has forced many in the quake-ravaged region such as Ms. Deng largely to fend for themselves, relying for assistance only on that bedrock institution of rural Chinese society: the extended family.

Internal government records show that most sedated deportees, such as Ade, received a cocktail of three drugs that included Haldol, also known as haloperidol, a medication normally used to treat schizophrenia and other acute psychotic states. Of the 53 deportees without a mental illness who were drugged in 2007, The Post's analysis found, 50 were injected with Haldol, sometimes in large amounts.

Haldol gained notoriety in the Soviet Union, where it was often given to political dissidents imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals. "In the history of oppression, using haloperidol is kind of like detaining people in Abu Ghraib," the infamous prison in Iraq, said Nigel Rodley, who teaches international human rights law at the University of Essex in Britain and is a former United Nations special investigator on torture

Last Thursday, he came out swinging against Sen. Obama after the Democrat said Sen. McCain was "losing his bearings." Mr. Salter complained publicly that the Democratic front-runner's comment was a "not particularly clever way of raising John McCain's age." The jab, he said, was "typical of the Obama style of campaigning."
The Obama camp fired back at Mr. Salter. "Clearly, losing one's bearings has no relation to age, given this bizarre rant that Mark Salter just sent out," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

MEGAN: And voting for McCain over Obama would be a terrible mistake says Hillary, so all you HRC supporters should listen to your candidate and pull the lever, or else the rest of us will be blaming you in November.

• The Sichuan earthquake has probably killed 9,000 people, and let 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia out into the streets, but if I know you guys it's the panda stuff that is really going to get to you. [Wash Post]
  
• But — thanks investment banks! — it probably won't have that big an impact on the economy! [WSJ]
  
• Or Beijing's standing as the number one toilet metropolis. [Xinhua]
  
• Meanwhile in Burma the UN is projecting a death toll of 100,000, and Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon can't get junta leader Than Shwe on the phone so he actually just sent a letter, and the US is still trying to get them to accept aid at all...[Wash Post]
  
• Hillary is going to win the white vote by landslide margins in West Virginia because they're still coming to grips with the notion of the first Muslim president down there. [FT]
  
• Well it's about time Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson vowed lifelong commitment.[US Weekly]

• Our favorite place Yemen made the Foreign Policy list of five most dangerous food crises, but North Korea beat it out for number one. [FP]
• John McCain does not plan on sticking around for the ice caps to melt but remember he has young children and sometimes even the capacity for independent thought. [NYT]
• Which may sound radical but that's what Huckabee's there for. [US News]
• If you think you can take advantage of the crap economy just by getting in on a payday loan business, well, you sort of can. [WSJ]
• America steadfastly refuses to forget how comprehensively shitty the Bush Administration has been. [Wash Post]

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?

• Hillary Clinton won't wear Donna Karan anymore because it makes her look too well-dressed. Four words, Hillary: Nancy Pelosi is Speaker. [Times UK]
  
• Nader wants to to save half of your tax return and give him the other half so he can hopefully get McCain elected. Man, fuck that guy. [Boston Globe]
  
• It's okay, though, because oil is now $126 a barrel, a new record, so you'll just have to spend it on that anyway. [Washington Times]

• Staff Sgt. Louis Falcon spent months of his tour of Iraq trying to get a teenage Iraqi girl prosthetic legs. It made him feel so good he's, um, willing to do more tours there killing people. [LA Times]
• The Burmese junta is going to hold elections on time tomorrow, now that they've successfully resolved the humanitarian crisis of a CNN reporter reporting on the cyclone and the resulting death and destruction they don't really give a shit about doing anything about. [Washington Times, CNN]
• But they're in "good" company in their apathy, since OPEC only gave $1.5 million to the World Food Programme this year, dwarfing the only member donation from the UAE of $50,000. The U.S., by comparison, has given $362.7 million so far this year and pledged $250 million to the WFP. [Fox News]
• But, hey, the oil industry's got plenty of money for a charm campaign. They're taking bloggers to oil platforms! Everyone will learn to love high gas prices once bloggers explain to them the nuances of oil prices and why oil companies deserve billion-dollar profit margins. [Washington Post]
• Schadenfreude alert: Al Sharpton owes $1.5 million in back taxes and penalties. Someone's gotta pay for those suits. [Associated Press]
• Obama has surpassed Clinton in the race for superdelegates this afternoon. Not a good Friday at Hillary HQ. [NY Times]
• Which probably explains the anti-Obama e-mail campaign Hillary supporters have started, much to the chagrin of uncommitted superdelegates. Really, people? McCain is better than a Democratic Presidency? Maybe you're the ones who should move to Canada. [Huffington Post]
• I've already had a drink but, like this judge, I could really use a foot massage. I'd rather not have to order an underling to do it, though. Yay equality, bringing sexual harassment to both sexes. [CNN]
• Crap, I was supposed to find a happy story. Um, the trade deficit is down because our economy sucks! But, the trade deficit's down! [NY Times]

• After last night's fellatio-esque interview of John McCain, reporters ask Jon Stewart if he's a real journalist and if he should've tried harder to ask a real question. No, and yes. [Comedy Central, Time, Rolling Stone]
  
• No one really cares, though, because Hillary might not actually stay in the race until August. [NY Times]
  
• And there is one economist who agrees with her gas tax plan, but only because this example of blatant electoral pandering is the method of blatant electoral pandering likely to do the least harm of all the harmful ways to blatantly pander to the electorate. [NY Times]
  
• Oh, and some New York Congressman got his mistress pregnant three years ago and has a secret love child and is a drunk driver. Even married Republicans lose when it comes to abstinence-only education. [NY Times]

• That pedophile Interpol was searching for? He was a store Santa from Jersey and found fucking little kids "euphoric." Gross. [Associated Press]
• And some people still buy that shit about Obama being a Muslim. [Wired]
• And some dude used to drug and rape women at his office parties, but the law firm he worked at didn't sack him for it or warn anyone even after 2 women got drugged and reported it. Dudes, don't lawyers know not to fuck with lawyers? [Boston Globe]
• Mark Penn is so dumb that he didn't know about proportional representation in the primaries when Hillary hired him, but she'll still have to pay him the $10 million or so she owes him. Asshole. [HuffPo]
• And, for my girl/fellow alum SarahMC, check out the disaster porn of a mega car crash in Allston right by the Shaws on Comm Ave. [Boston Globe]
• Speaking of disasters, Burma is still fucked. [NY Times]
• And the Prime Minister of Israel has likely been taking bribes from foreigners. [Washington Times]
• God I need a fucking drink.

MEGAN: So, here we are again, Crappy-ing without Moe who is on vacation because you and me are suckers, possibly. I've heard vacations are nice, though. Through the grapevine.
SPENCER: speaking of vacations, i need to put out an open call to the Jezebels who live in Austin
on Saturday 5/17 i'll be there to see the reunion show of classic 90s Chicago punk band Los Crudos
and i have nowhere to stay and no one to hang out with now that my travel partner has abandoned me for such frivolities as "finding a place to live"
so if any of you guys live in austin and can put up with a respectful houseguest for like a day, holler at sackerman-at-washingtonindependent-dot-com
ok what is in the news
MEGAN: Oh, that sucks about having nowhere to stay! I'd offer up someone but the only person I for sure know in Texas is in Dallas and it's this douchebag lobbyist I used to date and I wouldn't subject anyone to his company. And if you were a girl, he'd mack on you something awful.
SPENCER: so, HRC not dropping out despite our awesome reconciliation-filled comment thread yesterday?
MEGAN: Nope, not in the slightest. She's in it to win it, even if she cannot, mathematically speaking, win it. I am counting down the minutes until she mentions again that "pledged" delegates are not actually obligated to vote for whom they were elected to vote for...
SPENCER: this baffles me
how the press treats her candidacy like it's still viable, even as they're pointing that out
MEGAN: Well, she is a candidate. And she could win if she did manage to convince like 80% of the supers to support her and continued to get at least decent margins in the primaries. It's just unlikely to happen.
Very, very, very unlikely.
SPENCER: i was watching the detroit-orlando last night and was thinking about what would happen if sportscasters started saying things like, "orlando is up by over 20 with 30 seconds left in the fourth, but detroit could still pull it out in the unlikely event of overtime"
MEGAN: Actually, that might make it worth it to me to watch a basketball game. I fucking hate sports commentary, but if it was actually Dadaist in its absurdity...
SPENCER: ok and so not to pick on HRC, because yesterday's CH comments were a beautiful miracle, but the longer this goes on the more it makes her say things like this:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

a strong prima facie case can be made that Ajmi didn't "return" to the battlefield. The experience of being hooded and goggled and flown half a world away in the belly of a C-130; of being caged under the hot sun in the chain-link-and-wood sarcophagus of Camp X-Ray and then the panopticon of Camp Delta — and I have seen it with my own eyes; of being always at the mercy of the Quick Reaction Force and the Joint Detentions Operations Group and the interrogators; and never having a clear and open and fair path to argue for your freedom for years — that is the sort of thing that makes a man plot revenge. To deny that is to deny human nature.

I'm not saying Ajmi was an innocent. I'm not saying Guantanamo gave him a license to murder. And I'm certainly not saying that his victims deserved to die because he spent three years in Guantanamo.

What I'm saying is that a completely forseeable consequence of Guantanamo Bay is the creation of terrorists.

• New York City police arrested Al Sharpton, Sean Bell's fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, and hundreds of other protesters today for staging prayer sessions at the exits of Manhattan in protest over the acquittal of the cops that shot Mr. Bell. Because, obviously, inconveniencing others to protest the loss of life means you should spend time at Rikers. Why did they have to make me like Al Sharpton? [NY Times]
  
• Hillary's staying in the race despite the hellishly long odds, hoping that Barack will fuck it up and she can convince the superdelegates to anoint her the candidate. [NY Times]
  
• To that end, she had an unannounced meeting in Washington with many of them behind closed doors. There's nothing sketchy-looking about that to the average voter though. [The Atlantic]

• And, goddammit, I find myself agreeing with Bush's threat to veto the "Democratic" housing crisis bill because it's a huge giveaway to shady mortgage lenders at the expense of taxpayers. Yes, that's right, the Republican butt-buddy of industry is criticizing the Champion-of-the-Little-Guy Party for their giveaways to industry. What the hell is happening in the world today? [Washington Post]
• I mean, a Bush Administration flunkie may actually testify before Congress about some shit they pulled! [Washington Post]
• But we resumed ritualized state-sanctioned murder last night. [NY Times]
• The death toll in Burma is likely to rise, and the junta doesn't give a shit about the people anyway so they're procrastinating on letting aid workers in. [Washington Post]
• Lebanon's having violent protests again. [LA Times]
• People are making souvenirs for Jenna Bush's wedding to sell to tourists. Fucking Marriage Industrial Complex. [Fox News]
• Oh, and our government is spending money to try to catch illegal immigrants trying to leave the United States. [LA Times]
• Not that any of that will stop conservatives from being happier by rationalizing away inequality. [LiveScience.com]
• Guess the rest of us will just have to stay frustrated and fatigued. [Reuters]

MOE: So I just had a thought. A strategist on Fox News used the word "fulcrum" and it completely tripped up the blonde, who was like, "I'm still fascinated by that word you used Rich, fulcrum." And then the other guy was like, "Yeah, fulcrum what the heck does that mean?" And the strategist laughed
MOE: And said, "It's physics, Bob, it has to do with the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum."
MOE: Which is not a law I particularly remember but it gave me this theory: I think that smart people become Republicans to feel smarter than all their friends.
MEGAN: Whoa, he even quoted that? I think today is a Big Word day because David Axelrod just used the word "potentate" on MSNBC talking about leaders in the Middle East and OPEC.

MEGAN: Okay, and now Joe Scarborough just called Tim Daly the Grand Poobah of the Creative Coalition.
MOE: What does that even mean?

MEGAN: Not that it's a definitive source, but Wiki says

Grand Poobah is a term derived from the name of the haughty character Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. In this comic opera, Pooh-Bah holds numerous exalted offices, including Lord Chief Justice, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Master of the Buckhounds, Lord High Auditor, Groom of the Back Stairs, and Lord High Everything Else. The name has come to be used as a mocking title for someone self-important or high-ranking and who either exhibits an inflated self-regard, who acts in several capacities at once, or who has limited authority while taking impressive titles.

MOE: Hahaha so it's a more appropriate name for an MC than I knew when I began immediately associating it with this awesome party jam...
MEGAN: Dude, that guy on the TV sorta looks like Kid from Kid N Play...
MOE: Oh dude speaking of amazing segues, apparently Grand Puba holds Nation Of Islam beliefs. Which brings me to Michelle Obama, of whom we now know the same thing thanks to the Grand Puba of paranoid indiscriminate hateration. We should totally form a Hitchens-inspired hip-hop collective. I know some rappers who would dig it. We would get on Stuffwhitepeoplelike IMMEDIATELY.

MEGAN: Oh, Christ, Hitchens takes so fucking long to get to the point, which is him calling Barack, basically, pussy-whipped. Which, obviously, any man that doesn't indiscriminately cheat on his long-suffering wife the way Hitchens does obviously is.
MEGAN: Did I ever mention that I once watched Hitchens leave a party with a really pretty 18 year old? She might've been 20. She had some crazy hero-worship in her eyes, but I'll bet he sweatily fucked that out of her with his stale cigarette smell and tiny British ween.
MOE: Man I was checking TheRoot for some response to the Hitch and the lead story is on "Why The Summer Of '88 Was My Generation's Greatest." The late eighties were so rad in a lot of ways, I'm just remembering. The End of History and the like. But it was also, like, one of the bleakest eras for American cities, which I kind of think represent the future of American pluralism, which apparently Michelle Obama didn't believe in in 1985, which is why we are now wondering if she isn't a radical bitterfascist.

MOE: And that is a very good read on the situation. I was honestly disgusted he chose to go after her fucking college thesis which is basically about how alienated and inferior she felt on account of all the elitist assholes at Princeton.
MOE: And he writes:

To describe it as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be "read" at all, in the strict sense of the verb. This is because it wasn't written in any known language.

MOE: Which is true of most academic papers.
MEGAN: Man, I sort of wish I could've written about that for my college thesis. I had to write about the role of ideology in determining women's status in the labor market in Germany before and after reunification.
MOE: But not even of hers.
MOE: I dropped out, yay. I don't think I wrote a decent paper ever in my life after my treatise on the collapse of the Weimar Republic in tenth grade. After that it was all an alcohol haze. I wrote some good stories for the Journal that were better researched than any of my papers, however.
MEGAN: I picked a graduate school based on where I didn't have to write another thesis, which is why I ended up chucking my completed SAIS application in the garbage rather than sending it.

MOE: : This was Christian's take on Hitchens which sort of nicely unpeels the layers of disingenuousness:

What he's really saying is, I, the Hitch, know that people must necessarily allow contradictions into their lives, especially politicians, who typically do so cynically, but I am cynical enough myself to pretend that I don't know that, and so I can write a column that honestly admits that Obama really has nothing in common with his Reverend (did I mention that I, the Hitch, hate all churchees—I know politicians are only pandering to them, but it's fun to pretend they're not) but that his wife is a menace.
7:14 PM asserts that his wife is a menace anyway.

MEGAN: Also, I am not going to click that again because it is more than I can handle imagining Hitch having his taint waxed AND NOW I HAVE IMAGINED IT AGAIN and I think I might hate you a little, give me a second to wash the taste of bile out of my mouth and then let's change the subject.
MEGAN: Here, let's talk about Clinton saying that OPEC can no long be allowed to exist so she's going to file a WTO complaint even though, like, she's not so keen on free trade policies or something and I'm pretty sure there's no way it would succeed.
MOE: Ah, yeah so there is a bill to amend the Sherman Act to make oil-producing and exporting cartels illegal.
MOE: God, remember the fucking Sherman Act?

MEGAN: Which means, what? That we won't buy oil from OPEC anymore? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
MOE: Well, if the Heritage Foundation and major trade unions can agree on something...

Indeed, the only serious challenge to the organization came in 1978 when a U.S. non-profit labor association, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), sued OPEC under the Sherman Antitrust Act, in IAM v. OPEC. But the case was rejected in 1981 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. OPEC, the court affirmed, could not be prosecuted under the Sherman Act due to the foreign sovereign immunity protection it claimed for its member states. That decision was wrong. Government-owned companies that engage in purely business activities do not warrant sovereign immunity protection according to prevailing legal doctrines

MOE: Apparently the effort was led by William "Wimpy" Wimpsinger. I like that he took that "wimp thing" and sort of owned it. Do you think Hitchens cynically wants the Clintons back because it makes his job easier?

I have the distinct feeling that the Obama campaign can't go on much longer without an answer to the question: "Are we getting two for one?" And don't be giving me any grief about asking this. Black Americans used to think that the Clinton twosome was their best friend, too. This time we should find out before it's too late to ask.

MEGAN: Wait, so white man Christopher Hitchens would like Black America to know that the Obamas will... what exactly? Betray them like the Clintons? I think this is why I only read stuff he writes about him waxing his back, sack and crack.
MOE: Oh man hip-hop reference segue time #2 of the morning. Let's give a shout-out to Khia. Dude, the Hitchens inspired DJ collective is a total gold idea. I know these dudes Plastic Little who could get into it. They're biracial like Obama. But I think we've gotta address the notion of Burma, and how this cyclone hit just as Hollywood celebs were getting in on the action.
MEGAN: So, am I right that the appropriately white guilty thing to do is not talk about the oppressive government for a bit?
MOE: Here's the latest "That's So Jane's!" on the matter, God I love this graphic...Apparently you likened Burma to Katie Holmes.
MEGAN: Oppression shows its face in all kinds of dark ways.
MOE:

It's an Orwellian nightmare that makes China look like a liberal paradise by comparison. For twenty years there has been nothing on this scale and when protests have been staged they have been in the order of hundreds and have been easily dealt with. The monks posed a huge dilemma for the military since they initially felt that they could not simply resort to smashing skulls and opening fire indiscriminately. Buddhists believe that what you do in this life will determine how you come back next time. So massacring a few monks is more likely to see you come back as a cockroach than achieving nirvana.

MEGAN: Well, but they'll be born in China or India more often than not, so it's like they get reborn into a less oppressive regime?
MOE: Okay here's another thing. The last sentence of that Times story.

If you talk to Vaclav Havel, he'll say that Lou Reed's support for human rights in Czechoslovakia was very important to the cause."

MEGAN: Um, I guess the cool factor is really important?

MEGAN: But neither Ellen Page or Jim Carrey is Lou Reed.
MOE: Okay so there's a primary tonight and I'm sick of primary nights but I suppose we ought to address it. Hillary Clinton will win in Indiana because she's "not going to put my lot in with economists." Obama will win North Carolina because Petey Pablo is from there. Oh man, hip-hop foray part III. Do you remember when Petey Pablo did that remix of "North Carolina" on the USA after 9/11? I'm sure you won't, but some commenter might. I think he also went to Afghanistan. Okay. Any predictions?
MOE: Terry McAuliffe is on Fox right now. His prediction is that "people will be saying she did better in both states than they thought she would." Jesus Christ.
MEGAN: I predict me and a lovely bottle of Petite Sirah will be blogging it tonight for Glamocracy. And that I hate being wrong so I don't make predictions but it does seem like the polls are saying that Hillary will take Indiana and Obama will take NC.
MEGAN: Whoa, talk about managing expectations there, Terry Boy. I didn't think the polls in Indiana were that close, plus she's been standing in pickup trucks! Pickup trucks are like electoral gold in Indiana.
MOE: I'm going to leave us with a passage from David Brooks, because I found it calming, sort of like certain candidates.

This wasn't just shameless spin, it was shamelessness with a purpose. Clinton signaled that she wasn't going to concede even an inch to the vast elitist conspiracy. She wasn't going to feel guilty about ignoring the evidence. She was going to stomp on it, flay it and leave it a twisted mass of jelly quivering on the ground. She was going to perform the primordial duty of an alpha dog leader — helping one's own....But, as Sunday's contrast made clear, Obama still seems like a human being. He still seems to return each night to some zone of normalcy where personal reflection lives.He wasn't fully candid when answering questions about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but there are some inner guardrails that prevent the spin from drifting too far from the truth. Thoughtful and conversational, he doesn't seem to possess the trait that Clinton has: automatically assuming that critics are always wrong. Obama still possesses his talent for homeostasis, the ability to return to emotional balance and calm, even amid hysteria.