MOE: Okay, this is the kind of paragraph too good to check, but I kind of wish they'd checked it anyway:

They have reason for concern: News last year that the biggest named beneficiary in Mrs. Helmsley’s will was Trouble, her Maltese, led to death threats against the dog, which now requires security costing $100,000 a year.

I really don't see how this is possible, unless there is a business more lucrative than supplying ammunition to the Pentagon or starting an Iraqi resistance organization. How hard would it be to just take Trouble to some sort of doggie day care, where he could relax and meet other dogs and begin a new life away from all the old ghosts and outrageous comments? Which reminds me,
MOE: If someone has a hit out on your dog, do the police have any responsibility to keep it alive?
MEGAN: Who would put a hit out on a dog? Like, a for-real hit? Didn't people see A Fish Called Wanda?
MOE: And isn't this whole story sort of a study in how people who have excessive affection for animals — maybe there is something wrong with them?
MEGAN: Anyway, I would think the cops would dismiss both the threat and the person reporting it as cracked.
MOE: And that
MOE: is when you call in the $100,000 ex-KGB pet security service.
MEGAN: I mean, if you have $5-$8 million to spend in, what, like 10 years or less, given that the dogs were a certain age when Leona died, why now?
MEGAN: I mean, why not, Freudian typo.
MEGAN: Anyway, so did you see the harbinger of the economic apocalypse? Starbucks is closing 600 stores.
MOE: Leona Helmsley was once heard saying, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes." And in that vein I think we need to remind readers that Barack Obama, double Ivy Leaguing arugula-chomping card-carrying member of the elitist elite, got a home loan that may have saved him $300 a month. THREE HUNDRED A MONTH. Don't get me wrong, I'd love an extra $300 a month but if they went through some shady unethical business to save that no one can ever accuse them of being too highbrow ever again.
MEGAN: It doesn't even sound like they got it somewhere shady. It looks like they went through a local bank (support your local businesses!) who probably don't see a ton of wealthy customers or super-jumbo loans, showing nearly $500,000 in annual income, a $2 million windfall payment and the potential for book earnings. I'd bend over backwards to get those people as customers, too. Did I tell you back when I was trying to find an interesting job out of grad school, before I decided stupidly to be a lobbyist, I interviewed for a position in private banking? That's banking for super-rich people. It's all about relationship-building. The .375% they maybe lost on the loan discount they gave to get the business (in that world) is more than made up for the volume of business you get from making a wealthy customer happy. I wish I'd gotten that job.
MOE: Yes I know all about private banking. I had a friend whose dad was a client. The guy kept her on a budget but she would call at all hours to get funds. This sort of blew my mind. Starbucks, meanwhile, is a terrible terrible thing. I mean, these stores represent less than 5% of their stores, and apparently 70% of the closures are happening at stores that opened after 2005, so your Starbucks is probably safe, but for the exurban power centers and lifestyle strips that it will effect, the trickle-down (ha!) effects will be intense. Because those guys rely on Starbucks to pull in other tenants! And if they can't get Starbucks they're left with a 60% vacant strip mall!! Enough of those in your zip code and people might have to start moving back to cities.
MOE: Oh in other news, and I thought Pennsylvania state senators were sleazy. And also, how is this even possible. And also, Helmsley originally tried to leave $12 billion to her dog but the judge reduced that to $2 billion and even pitched in a few million for some grandchildren Helmsley had deliberately left out of her will.
MEGAN: You know how you know the Massachusetts guy is a bad politician? Unlike a Congressman, he's not running for re-election.
MOE: Oh god and thank the deities Obama nabbed the critical Streisand endorsement.
MEGAN: Well, that and Michelle's speech last week should help him corral some of the LGBT Hillary supporters that are still upset.
MOE: Yeah he's no Vito Fossella.

Prosecutors alleged in a news release that Marzilli told one woman, "The sex is sweet, the sex is sweet, you want it, and you want to go with me."
He allegedly asked the second woman "Do you have any undergarments under that?"

I'm trying not to mention Italy's dismally low birth rate right here.
MEGAN: Well, Congressman Fossella could've helped out with that, what with his 2 kids with his wife and one with his mistress, he's totally beating the replacement rate!
MEGAN: Also, "the sex is sweet"? Was he fucking high? That shit wouldn't get a boyfriend laid, let alone a stranger on the street.
MOE: Oh check it out Obama beat out McCain as barbecue guest even though I hear McCain, inexplicably given what we know of Obama's iPod, did better on the "who'd you rather carpool to work with." Oddly, there doesn't seem to be a poll yet addressing the question, "Which candidate would you rather have holler at you on the street?" James Marzilli might have just won the Worst Holler
MEGAN: In other insult news, Paul Begala would like to apologize to dirt for calling Republican lobbyists dirtbags:

"I think it was wrong for me to call those fat cat lobbyists dirtbags," said the longtime Clinton confidante. "It is an insult to bags for dirt around the world."

MEGAN: Even the RNC spokeperson laughed at that one.
MEGAN:

"A bag of dirt will have the occasional fecal matter, but generally dirt is good," he said. "I'm a gardener and I grow tomatoes. I love dirt. I should have said oil bag [when talking about GOP donors], or a chemical bag or toxic bag. After all life grows out of dirt."

MOE: I would have suggested he said "bag of coal" but that would be insulting to the barbecues Americans are so eager to invite the Obamas to. Did you check Harry Reid's YouTube performance? It's gone viral. I'm not sure why? But I endorse!
9:15 AM
MEGAN: While I'm watching that, you should read Attackerman's post on our using 70s Chinese torture manuals to train our soldiers on how to torture effectively and watch the video of Christopher Hitchens getting waterboarded, but not for any prurient interest.
MOE: I was going to bring that up with you, first you do it, then this graffiti artist does it and now the Hitch signs up. Does he address whether it's more painful than getting his balls waxed? Actually, can we just do that from now on? Wax the balls of these guys? And I read the story on how we got our interrogation tactics from the Chinese, who also incidentally invented water torture except no wait they didn't they just got wrongly accused of that, and I feel the same way in this sense. Also remember about the INS using Soviet drugs to sedate detainees?
MEGAN: I do remember the sedating detainees thing, that's just fucked up. I wonder if Hitchens saw the video of me waterboarding Jim (lost in the Wonkette server transition when they got sold, RIP waterboarding video) and thought it looked less crappy and scary than it was?
MEGAN: Also, I would think that ball-waxing would be Geneva-compliant, as long as it wasn't women doing it.
MOE: Thomas Frank digs through the Library of Congress on McCain adviser Charlie Black and finds a cynical former officer of some young fascist society that employed nasty smear tactics and liked to take money from poor and give it to fatcat oil bag Republicans.
MEGAN: Black founded the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which, if what Franks says is true, explains why people think PACs are all shitty and dirty and not just money clearing houses for the most part:

NCPAC's calling card was slime. It constantly attacked members of Congress for votes they hadn't cast and positions they hadn't taken – "there have been a few mistakes made in terms of research," was all Mr. Black would admit – and the group's main accomplishment was dodging the campaign-finance laws of the day.

Why does McCain keep this guy around? He's the Pied Piper of bad press.
MOE: And it's not like the McCain campaign is wary of downsizing! Um, do you think that when rich evil people are irrationally devoted to their pets it's a sign that there is something just fundamentally fucked up about pets in general? Because I sort of do.
MEGAN: I think it's something fundamentally wrong with the lives of those rich people.
MOE: She evicted her own widowed daughter-in-law.
MEGAN: Like, they're so alienated from other people and feel like the only unconditional love they get is from their pets (which may be true — God knows Leona wasn't known as a great humanist and treated people like shit, so they probably didn't like her).
MOE: Yeah but do you feel like you know a fair amount of people who, given the money, might become even more pet-obsessed and gradually distance themselves from all humanity? Because I feel like I do. I don't know. Maybe I'm just sort of a hater.
MEGAN: I can't really say, I know, like 6 friends with pets and one of them is you.

MOE: Um it's about to get a lot easier to get as drunk as I unintentionally did last night in Utah.
Happy birthday Spencer!
MEGAN: Oh, yes, happy (belated) birthday Spencer!
That "private club" thing is such bullshit, it just means that every single bar charges you cover, including fucking hotel bars, but if you go into a restaurant and order food, you can get hooch. And I know this/hate this because I went to SLC on a business trip once and stayed in the Mormon hotel (no booze) and my co-worker and I wandered the streets of SLC desperately seeking alcohol but too cheap to pay cover until we figured out the restaurant thing. So, hooray Utah! I might come back.
Didja see the interview with Mark Penn, speaking of needing alcohol?
MOE: I never got the point past where the writer stopped arguing with Penn about whether he was allowed to ask him about the campaign. What happens next?
Robert Byrd is in the hospital by the way. He is also ninety. Is he a superdelegate?
MEGAN: He is a superdelegate, and he endorsed Obama.
Mark Penn thinks I'm a "small petite" and a "tech fatale" because I like gadgets and I'm not ashamed of being short. I hate Mark Penn more than I did before I read the article, and that's saying something.

The Penn philosophy of both politics and marketing involves identifying such groups through polling, then micro-targeting them with messages crafted precisely to their unique concerns. It's not pandering, he insists: it's an expression of faith in voters as smart and rational creatures who vote according to self-interest, not airy intangibles or well-packaged personalities. "They're not really voting for people on the basis of the colour of their tie," he says. "They're voting for people on the basis of [what it] means for them and their families at the time."

Oh, also, us "elites" are stupid and it's the working class people who are getting increasing rational:

I'm pretty sure I'm being filed away as a member of the "impressionable elites", a microtrend Penn identifies whereby working-class voters get ever more adept at making rational choices based on data, while only the more privileged - people who aren't "living through the difficulties with healthcare, and the economy, and the mortgage, and the job loss" - can afford to indulge in frivolous chatter about hope and change.

MOE:

And thus it was, Penn's critics argue, that for too long Hillary's campaign was a muddle of small, contradictory, cautious messages, when what the moment required was passion, inspiration, and a promise of change.

I didn't know he ran Clinton's 1996 campaign.
MEGAN: Yup, that's one of the reasons Hillary refused to ditch him
MOE: so where are the primaries today? besides south dakota?
MEGAN: I think maybe Ezra Klein doesn't like Penn either (I'm only adding this in because I actually busted out laughing when I read it)

"Microtrends is so bad that the question ... isn't whether it will destroy [Penn's] own reputation, but whether it is so epically awful as to take the entire polling industry down with it."

Montana. Big Sky State.
Don't let's make fun of me for knowing that.
MOE: I did a fourth grade report on Montana and even I don't know that. Also, did it ever occur to you that all these fucking states have to figure out a state flower? Unless they don't and that just happened to be what some of them did. Either way, I don't remember Montana's state flower. And I will say this of "microtrends": if we think our politicians are bad, look at our snack foods? I can't find where Ezra said that. Although I do appreciate the tag line "Momma said wonk you out." Ah, the young opinionated liberal DC blogger population and its hip-hop fluency. It's almost like they all went to camp together?
MEGAN: Google says Montana's state flower is...
wait for it
The bitterroot.
MOE: Sounds like our psychographic! It's the new "delicate flower."
MEGAN: Also, if they all went to camp together, this explains how I'm the odd kid out. I didn't even go to violin camp. I volunteered at the library most summers because I could bike or walk there and it was free and my parents couldn't really have afforded camp even if I was outdoorsy and wanted to go.
MOE: I was not outdoorsy really. I actually just should have lived in a city. So many kids are miserable growing up in the suburbs. I think it's what makes this country great.
MEGAN: It just always weirds me out, I didn't feel like the only person who hated/complained about Scotia, only 13 years later, I'm definitely in a small minority of people who don't live in the area.
So, like, if everyone hates growing up in the 'burbs, why does everyone insist on raising their kids there?
MOE: To teach them misery
MEGAN: Oh, well, then that makes sense! Also, remember the whole thing about Congress fucking up the Farm Bill? Turns out, it's Newt Gingrich's fault
MOE: Dude: "He's just a dishonest guy, he can't help it."Said Bill Clinton re the writer of the Vanity Fair piece. Followed directly by:

"The editor of Esquire— he sent us an email yesterday and said it was the single sleaziest piece of journalism he'd seen in decades. He said it made him want to go take a shower and he was embarrassed to be a journalist when he read it."

Um, David Granger? If you were thinking about cooking up yet another "how Bill fucked Hillary" expose, can I suggest that certain of your psychographics might be fatigued by this topic? But if the former president is lying, well, I suppose he can't help it.
MEGAN: I mean, really? He's got to accuse the writer of lying? Why not accuse all the anonymous sources? Why not pull an Et tu, Brute rather than laying it at the feet of the writer?
MEGAN: Heck, I was talking about this last night. You want to know what you do? You don't directly attack the guy. You say, with deep disappointment on your face and in your voice, gosh, you know, it's so hard when the people you trusted sell you out and spread rumors and innuendo about you. It's just heartbreaking that people I have loved would do that to me, but that's the nature of politics today, everyone looking to be their own boldfaced name. It's only slightly more heartbreaking than when his wife, Dee Dee, you remember, my former press secretary? It's only slightly more disappointing to us then when she refused to endorse my wife. Anyway, it's just so sad.
And then you shut up and everyone thinks he's a dick and that it's political and the stories stop.
MOE: See, I love how we play press secretary with these people. Btw I'm just being reminded that yesterday Balk blamed Clinton's assholery this election around on beta blockers. (So did Purdum, though I don't think that came till the sixth or seventh page.) Unrelated Catholics who support Obama are having a tough time getting served Communion in your town. I bet I know one priest who would be up for fixing that. Which brings me to: Obama quitting Trinity. Why? Now? That was a stupid thing to do and I didn't really say so yesterday.
MEGAN: I mean, they're probably sick of being mocked and threatened, he's sick of being asked about it, it's probably a pretty mutual break up.
Also, on the Catholic thing, I think that it sucks but that's the price you pay for being a Catholic who disagrees when you get a Pope who intends to bring us wayward thinking-we-can-disagree American sheep back into the fold of blind-following.
MOE: I used to not receive communion just because i was lazy. then i started having sex and getting it every time.
MEGAN: I stopped taking Communion when I quit the Church. My mom is really embarrassed when I accompany her to Church on Christmas and I'm like, you're more embarrassed that I'm showing respect for your religion and its rules than by me disrespecting the institution? Not that logical arguments have ever gotten me anywhere with my mom, but I keep trying.
MOE: I'm adding a new brand of McCain scandalette to "says idiotic and inaccurate but predictably hawkish thing about war" and "parts ways with adviser who is also shill for the interests of evil so as not to look like a hypocrite" and that is "says something idiotic but predictably hawkish that completely refutes something he said six months ago so as to look like a hypocrite all by himself"
MEGAN: I assume that you're talking about Charlie Black lobbying for Iran? Ah, the sweet smell of hypocrisy in the morning. That guy is just fucking McCain all over the place on his "I'm not close to lobbyists, I swear," there's like one awesome story a week about some other shady concern he represented! Atta boy, Charlie! Keep at it!
MOE: Chuck Shumer thinks we need to stop so openly mocking Russia's plans to restore regional hegemony and get them to impose trade sanctions upon Iran with us. The Iranian regime will topple! They've got that "growing" middle class!
MEGAN: Please, Iran has oil and Russian expat scientists, right? Russia's not gonna dance with us on this one, Chuck, but good luck with that!
MOE: And re McCain I was just talking about…I guess there was the Burma pair, the Dougs Goodyear and Davenport, and then the guy who quit because he represented energy companies, and the guy who shilled for Saudi Arabia, and then, wait, I didn't notice this one:

Craig Shirley was forced to quit when he was found to be behind an independent group attacking senators Clinton and Obama on the internet.

MEGAN: Well, the attacking Clinton and Obama wasn't the problem, it was shilling for the group which is a 527, and McCain hates 527s because his campaign finance law was supposed to get issue groups, like, out of campaigns but didn't. But, yes, the rest of that shit is kind of hilare.
MOE: Oh Good lord, good lord:

The group maintains a website that ran animated parodies of Clinton, and now parodies Obama, recently imagining a visit by Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the Obama White House. Shirley’s work was to promote the website and spread the word about its other promotional activities, including airplanes trailing “Stop Her Now” banners over Democratic presidential debates.

One recent anti-Obama cartoon features an Oval Office exchange between President Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Obama summons as his “spiritual advisor.”
“How may I serve you my brother?” asks the animated Wright.
“Is love black and white?” asks the fictional Obama.
“No - it is black,” shrieks Wright.
“Really?” asks Obama.
“Goddam right,” the minister replies.
"That's what I'd thought you'd say," says a reassured Obama.

MEGAN: Yeah, I mean, I'm not defending the 527, but it's not even that shit that got Shirley fired even though one might hope that it would be.
MOE: Well there was that other dude who got fired, the one whose facebook account we posted. Remember, the guy who got fired over something on his TWITTER?
MEGAN: OH, he was pimping some YouTube mashup thing about Wright, yeah, I vaguely remember that. It made McCain look bad and he wasn't Charlie Black, so he was out!
MOE: So what do we think? Is he going to pull through tonight? Is she going to fold?
MEGAN: Well, everyone this morning was looking at her plans to speak in NYC tonight despite probably winning in South Dakota, and the fact that she's invited all her major donors and supporters there and asked that staff turn in all outstanding expense reports by the end of the week as her planning a concession, but there's been a wave of Hillary surrogates on TV denying it this morning, saying she's just putting together a superdelegate phone back or something.
But given the likely margins tonight, Obama will only need like 25 superdelegates to endorse today and he already had Congressman Clyburn (D-SC) on the Today show this morning, so...
MOE: It's one of those things where you just know Mandy and Maggie and Harold and Bill and everyone has totally been at one another's throats fighting over whether she should concede or stay in, and it's going to take Chelsea to say, "Why don't we ask what my mom wants?"
Anyway, all the deep-seated racism and misogyny revealed by this campaign has made poor Richard Cohen depressed. Which is so typical of Washington. Like, really? This campaign made you depressed? Have you ever covered crime? Or even like watched The Wire? What about reality TV?
MEGAN: Dude, he was on Morning Joe this morning talking about this and Pat Buchanan was all "Well, white people look at black people voting for Obama because he's one of theirs, so it's just white people voting for one of ours" and I almost swallowed my tongue.
I was incoherent with rage. It was like, Pat Buchanan just said black people shouldn't've voted for Obama if they didn't want white people to vote for Clinton.