MEGAN: Just for the record, I thought it important to note at this juncture that I spent 12 Euro this morning on a T-shirt that says "Good Bush, Bad Bush" and features a picture of a woman yanking down her underwear and one of George Bush, but mostly just because it was 12 Euros and a nice heavy T-shirt. I'm hoping to wear it, like, around the Republican convention or something.

And, I have been wondering for the better part of the last week what gas costs here vs. in America between the exchange rate and the liter/gallon conversion and in the last 3 minutes I have calculated it. At today's exchange rate, gas is about $9.36/gallon in Germany (at least in this part of Germany). So, um, I think we've got a long was to go gas-price-wise.

SPENCER: the Germans had better lift their ban on offshore oil drilling then how else will they maybe bring the price of gas down 3 cents in maybe 30-40 years?

MEGAN: I mean, not even Bush fucking believes that shit, he just wants more gas because you know he ain't getting back on a Segway any time soon.

SPENCER: also, you know what's disgusting? Monster Energy Drink. I don't know how people drink this shit, but I have like 15 oz to go and while the Sunk Cost Fallacy doesn't apply to, say, investment strategy or the Iraq war, I feel like it has a certain logic when it comes to morning beverages.

I drove to Baltimore and back on Saturday but thanks to the miracle of Zipcar's gas-dedicated credit card I did not purchase gas
MEGAN: What happened to you drinking coffee? All those "energy" drinks  and especially Red Bull  taste list over processed Mountian Dew to me.

SPENCER: you, my Carolla-wielding friend, are fucked. I like Red Bull

MEGAN: Luckily, I hardly drive my Corolla.

SPENCER: hahahaha one of my friend's status message is "Now I have Toyota Corolla. Just like everybody else."

MEGAN: I mean, I've had it 8 years in December and it's got like 65,000 miles on it, and that includes trips home and all the driving I used to do for work.

SPENCER: I had to stop in a magazine shop to buy a an offensive magazine to get offended at in public and all they had was Monster Energy Drink.

MEGAN: I've just bought fashion magazines to do something with later when I have a scanner, but there's one in which the nipples are airbrushed out just like in America! Anyway, we should probably also talk about the whole Pat Tillman investigation that's going nowhere fast, if only to get to the following quote which I found horrible.

The committee cited one exchange between White House political chief Karl Rove and Ron Fournier, then a political reporter for The Associated Press.
In a chain under the subject line "H-E-R-O," Rove replied to an e-mail from Fournier by saying, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this?"Fournier replied, "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."

MEGAN: The fuck? And now he's head of the AP's Washington Bureau? I guess it just goes to show you can have political opinions and still get to the top of your profession as a journalist or something like that. Maybe as long as they're Republican.

SPENCER: ok, I saw my old boss flag this, but honestly, BFD. Fournier wrote a source-greasing email that didn't say anything particularly offensive. Reporters do this all the time  Rove would call it "strategery"

MEGAN: I just meant the creepy religio-patriotism about it skeeves me. But I'll trust you on that and defend you when your emails come out in 6 years or something for sure.

SPENCER: As to Fournier's political leanings, I remember watching Recount with you  Fournier was the guy who calls Ron Klain on election night to tell Gore not to concede, which is way more partisan than this email to Rove

MEGAN: Omg, you're so right. So he's really just a slimy suck-up like I always was as a lobbyist. Ah, the good old days.

SPENCER: or am I just part of the journalistic problem now by not being offended by it?

MEGAN: We're all part of the problem, right? Do we care to comment on Rove defending ignoring subpoenas or is it par for the course and we're done caring?

SPENCER: I'm actually trying to write a piece about shit like this for a magazine-that-shall-not-be-named, and I want to call it "The Politics of Retribution"

MEGAN: By the way, Der Speigel's website apparently has a timer counting down to the end of the Bush Administration. And if one more person asks me who is going to win, I'm going to say something crazy like "Ralph Nader" and then laugh hysterically and start speaking in tongues. About the subpoenas thing?

SPENCER: see, Rove and the rest of them will only respect coercion and force, but Obama's candidacy/presidency is predicated on hope and all that shit

MEGAN: So they don't know how to react to people being polite to them?

SPENCER: so the piece would be about how he should use the Senate Democrats and Attorney General John Edwards to launch an onslaught of persecution aimed at uncovering the abuses of the last 8 years

MEGAN: Aw, angry Johnny! I miss him and his pretty hair.

SPENCER: like a smart strategy for Obama in Year One would be to order a mass declassification about, like, rendition, torture, the U.S. attorney firings, everything you see covered on TPM

MEGAN: Ooh, that would be awesome. And not just because maybe someone would eventually hire me to dig through all of that shit and write about it.

SPENCER: not only does that bring all of this shit out into the light, it a) distracts the press while Obama launches into his universal health care/Iraq withdrawal agenda and b) it gets the right to lawyer up and cower in fear, constraining it from blocking said agenda and there's more! Implicitly, it acts as a really satisfying fuck-you

MEGAN: But, it does make Ben Ginsburg and his skeevy lawyer ilk a shit ton of money.

SPENCER: like, "Oh, you want U.S. persons communications' deemed merely 'relevant' to 'foreign intelligence information' wiretapped under a blanket warrant? Cool! Well, Mr. Feith, every time you call Ahmed Chalabi, I'mma be on the other line"

MEGAN: Oh, Dougie Feith! It'll be like all our favorite criminals seated on big panels. It'll be the left-wing McCarthyism. We'll get our own Fred Thompson.Except for he's Watergate, but you know what I mean.

SPENCER: or: "Oh, you want to be able to put a black bag over a motherfucker's head, google him, strap him up in the belly of a C-130 and drop him off into the middle of nowhere? You got it, Mr. Rumsfeld! One minute you're at your Kalorama crib complaining to Joyce about why she can't love you longtime like Midge Decter and the next you're dropped off on the side of the road in Spain, where Judge Baltasar Garzon has an indictment out for you for war crimes. Send me a postcard from the Hague!"

MEGAN: Well, hopefully you know what I mean, because I don't really, but in another interesting German story, I once worked at a language lab in college and got her hear the testimony of Bertold Brecht before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and he wrapped all them bitches up in knots, drove out to Dulles and hopped a plane to East Berlin. Where would Feith go?

SPENCER: speaking of Feith, he's going to be testifying to a House Judiciary panel at 10 about his role in authorizing torture which is why I can't stay crappying with you much longer

MEGAN: Totally cool, are you blogging it for Windy?

SPENCER: yeah

MEGAN: Are they going to ask him about the Beaver memo?

SPENCER: I believe they will! Mr. Feith, how familiar are you with a certain 2002 Beaver communication...?

MEGAN: So many double entendres, so little time.

SPENCER: Congressman, I can safely say no Beaver has ever talked to me, and if one did, I would not listen.

MEGAN: Mr Feith, are you saying you have no familiarity with anything Beaver related?

SPENCER: christ this Monster shit is DISGUSTING and it's making my chest hurt

MEGAN: Um, then, I think you should stop drinking it, your $1.75 be damned.

• Meet Bob Barr! He's running for President, wants John McCain's voters and is going to try really hard to get them in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana and West Virginia. Bob, can I also please recommend Ohio, Virginia, Georgia and Colorado? [Washington Post]
• Bush jumped on the "drill on our coastline to lower gas prices" bandwagon today now that his brother is no longer the Governor of Florida, despite the fact that there are hardly any ships to do it. I'll bet we could buy some from the Saudis or the Chinese or something. On credit. [Washington Post, NY Times]
• Mike Huckabee is trying to warn Republicans that demonizing Obama is gonna backfire. Luckily, they all stopped listening to him months ago, before they demonized Obama and lost those Congressional races. [Bloomberg]

• Three men were finally charged in the 2006 assassination of Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya. None of them will ever be tied to the people that ordered it, in all likelihood. [Washington Post]
• Tim Russert's funeral was today. It was sad. [NY Times]
• Torture apologist Doug Feith is a fraidy-cat, doesn't want to sit in a big room with people who might not like him, [ThinkProgress]
• That guy who swears that he blew Obama gave a press conference today, let out the crazy. His lawyer claims to need to wear skirts because of his enormous cock. [HuffPo]

MEGAN: So, once again, you're officially the world's most reliably friend and Crappy Hour replacement and I owe you drinks and probably Moe does too.
SPENCER: what happened to Jezebel's own Nancy Spungeon this morning
MEGAN: She is stuck in a never ending bureaucratic nightmare that involves queues and, apparently, no email access.
SPENCER: well there is hope
because what that describes has taken place at guantanamo bay for the past 7 years
and yesterday it came to an end
MEGAN: Well, sort of. I don't see them shutting it down today.
SPENCER: somewhat.
right you are!

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey says the Supreme Court's decision on Guantanamo detainees won't affect military trials against enemy combatants.

Mukasey, speaking Friday at a Group of Eight meeting of justice and home affairs ministers, said he was disappointed with the decision.

but there's absolutely no legal rationale for the camp anymore
MEGAN: God, it's so disappointing when you have to stop raping the Constitution.
SPENCER: one of my favorite pieces of Bush-era memorabilia
MEGAN: Mukasey's got a case of Constitutional abuse blue balls.
SPENCER: are two memos, both by John Yoo, about GTMO from early 2002
in the first, Yoo says that we need to stash detainees at GTMO in order to circumvent the Federal Torture Statute, which governs actions by Americans abroad  the rationale being that GTMO is American soil
MEGAN: John Yoo, who can safely proselytize his own special brand of "constitutional analysis" from his chair at UC Berkeley's law school.
SPENCER: as anyone who's ever been there  and i'm still hungover, that place is one huge party  can attest
but in the next memo, he says that the virtue of GTMO is that detainees won't have any rights in federal court, because GTMO is outside American soil
put that in the time capsule
savor it first, with its flinty-yet-rich aroma
MEGAN: Mmm, yummy, it's like sheep crap in the midst of a hot summer.
SPENCER: hey, look, i wrote about getting yoo kicked off the Berkeley faculty
there's an effort afoot by former Clinton official & Berkeley prof Brad DeLong
in the comments of this piece "ufred" asked if DeLong was really "as zealous as the fool he condemns"
"ufred" is MY DAD
my dad is one of my comment trolls
anyway
MEGAN: Speaking of shit, we should probably briefly discuss Mark Penn's insane rantings about the campaign.
SPENCER: oohhhh yeah i LOVED that piece
MEGAN:

So who didn’t listen to you?
Well, look, it’s not that people didn’t listen. It’s that people had a different idea of how you win against him. I had the idea that the best way to win against him would have been to go against him like any normal candidate as early as possible, because, as I often say, once the cat’s out of the bag, you really can’t put the cat back. It becomes a ten-times-harder task. And so we fundamentally disagreed on whether to take him on, on Iraq, you know.…
When you say “we”—
[laughs] Well, me. And President Clinton sided with me throughout this. The rest of the campaign… Look, their views were honorable views. It’s what they felt. I just think—

So it was you and the president against the rest of the campaign?
Me and the president thought, Take him on, take him on early. You know, bring out the fact that he gave these interviews saying that his views now were about the same as Bush and that his votes were the same as Hillary’s. And you know, therefore, take away a lot of the myth that’s brought up about his Iraq position. If you were to go through all of the strategy memos and all the preparations, it was always about, “What’s the difference between us and Obama? How can we illustrate that? How can we make that clearer?”

So, guess who Mark Penn is really actually loyal to? Hint: it's not Hillary. Seems like that might've been part of the problem.
SPENCER: well, let's take this up for a second
let's say penn's argument carries the day and HRC went into Obama's Iraq record
how is that a net plus for her? all it does is remind voters that she backed the war
no?
MEGAN: No, he's got an answer for that, too!
SPENCER: even if she was able to highlight some earlier, less-strident opposition on his part?
MEGAN:

Why do you think the rest of the team was afraid to go after him?
I think they thought that her position on Iraq wasn’t strong enough to sustain a debate on Iraq.

Or popular enough.
Right. But her position, remember—we went through the early discussion of “Was it a mistake? Should she apologize?” Of course, the rest of the team wanted her to apologize. [laughs] And you know, she weathered that extremely well. She didn’t apologize, because she had given a speech outlining her position. On that day. And that speech held up. It actually explained why she voted for Iraq and why it was a sincere vote at the time.

SPENCER: HAHAHAHAHA
here's where Hillary really was victimized by the one-two punch of Mark Penn and sexism
MEGAN: I love how he's right and everyone else is obviously wrong. I hate this guy.
SPENCER: the interview makes clear that penn really does believe that HRC needed to vote for the war

People who try to dissect your role say, “Everybody wanted to humanize her, and Mark Penn wanted to prove that she was capable of being commander in chief.” Do you regret that?
No. No. The basis of people being able to support her is the belief that she could be president of the United States.

see there he's indisputably correct
HRC or any woman will always, unfortunately, have a harder time of this than any man
and that's one of the reasons, in 2002, Mark Penn was telling her  not that he acknowledges this in the interview  to vote for the war
the implicit premise being that if she opposed the war, she'd never be able to pass the CINC test
and the honest answer to that? we'll never know
MEGAN: Wow, I never thought about it like that.
SPENCER: but it's clear over the last couple days of retrospectives
that while sexism was indisputably a massive obstacle for HRC's campaign  "iron my shirt," etc etc, you guys on jezebel know this much better than i possibly can  if HRC hadn't voted for the war there would have been absolutely no rationale for Barack Obama's campaign
none at all
he probably wouldn't have either wanted to run, or would only have run to raise his profile for a future presidential bid, or in any event wouldn't have gotten much traction with Dem voters
MEGAN: But, I think you're totally right, he says the whole time that it was about proving her capable, as though people really thought she wasn't. Like, the premise is the idea that people would question a woman as CINC, and I don't think that was ever really part of the debate, not when it came to her. I didn't like her, but I never questioned that she was capable of doing the job, I just figured she wouldn't do it the way I wanted it done.
SPENCER: and the sad truth is that men, and even some women, see this differently than you
MEGAN: I agree that it was definitely an early, obvious difference on which Obama was able to hang his hat and garner a lot of support.
SPENCER: even if they don't want a war they still want to believe that she would launch one if necessary even if the one she voted for was unnecessary
MEGAN: But couldn't she have countered that argument with Bosnia and Kosovo? Afghanistan, even?
SPENCER: and if she recanted her support for the war, you would have seen McCain or whomever saying that you can't trust these flighty menopausal women with matters of life and death because who knows when they'll change their minds
ask Howard Dean.
and, as much as he's a pussy, he's not even a woman!
MEGAN: Howard Dean has been the ball-less wonder of this primary season.
SPENCER: the public, i'm sorry to say, doesn't give a shit about Afghanistan, which is both more important to us than Iraq and descending to nearly the same level of hell
MEGAN: I just get the sense that Mark Penn didn't get Hillary, he got Bill and rather than providing her with objective advise based on her needs as a candidate, he chatted with Bill (not an unbiased guy) and did his polls and fought with people he didn't like and fucked it up and is now blaming everyone else and I hope no one ever pays him again for a campaign but there's no justice in the world so he'll continue being rich as sin the end.
SPENCER: the next time we have a woman candidate for president, she'll either have to not been a part of the iraq debate; vote against it from the start; or support a current/popular/justified/successful war
MEGAN: And, yes, Afghanistan is fucked.
Anyway, so on to other fucked things. UMass have Mugabe an honorary degree once but finally yanked it this week.
Oh, and Britain's "reviewing" his knighthood.
SPENCER: my friend Samantha "Monster!" Power once wrote a great Atlantic piece about why you might be able to credibly consider Mugabe a genocidaire
he's a knight???
MEGAN: An honorary one, apparently, yes.
SPENCER: whoa
didn't he just re-imprison Morgan Tsvangirai?
MEGAN: I know, I mean, do you get to call the Brits all the crap he's called them in the last few years as he's tried to desperately hold onto power by starving and killing his own people
SPENCER: did the brits ever even revoke his commonwealth travel privileges? i don't remember
MEGAN: He re-arrested him yesterday but they're charging another, less internationally-known party official with genocide.
SPENCER: now here's a task for the next president
MEGAN: Yeah, they revoked his privileges the last "election"
SPENCER: as part of the U.S.'s reintroduction to a durable international order
shepherd our entry into the International Criminal Court
MEGAN: Tendai Biti, if he's found guilty which he will be if they want him to be, will probably face execution.
Isn't the Pentagon totally opposed to that, though?
SPENCER: and seek to bring war-crimes charges against Mugabe
oh yes
MEGAN: I thought I remembered that from grad school. Good to know nothing's changed.
SPENCER: but it's a groundless fear cynically stoked by the right
no one is bringing any charges against any american service(wo)man
or general
the court would be 99.999999999% more likely to focus on criminal heads of state
oh speaking of, another one for our Bush-era time capsule
way way back in 2003
MEGAN: Well, it's not that I thought it wasn't a groundless fear. But, yes, Mugabe should face something but he probably won't. Besides, he's still got Mbeki's support I think.
SPENCER: one of the favorite activities of the Pentagon's Doug Feith
MEGAN: Besides masturbating to gay beastiality porn?
SPENCER: was to force countries to renounce their Article 98 rights to refer foreign countries to the ICC if they wanted in on lucrative Iraq contracting
why?
because Feith knew we were torturing motherfuckers in Iraq
which is a war crime
indictable by the ICC
so, spiting the Iraqi people and foreign allies, that's exactly what he did
in the interests of Bush/Rumsfeld/Feith's declared right to torture Iraqis
MEGAN: So, but would they be indicting soldiers or the ones who ordered them to do it? Like, say, Feith.
SPENCER: the honest thing to say is that the ICC's so new it hasn't been tested
but the Nuremburg-era principle of command responsibility PRESUMABLY holds
and you only saw top regime officials prosecuted, right, my german-scholar friend?
MEGAN: Indeed, but there was also a de-Nazification program, sort of copied in Iraq less successfully, as I recall
SPENCER: oh much less successfully!
MEGAN: So, like, the idea was to blame command, let everyone else off the hook to restart the society and kind of pretend like it was all Hitler's fault and no one else's. Ahem. People who voted for Bush in 2004.
SPENCER: to which Doug Feith, like Mark Penn, blames... everyone else
that is a compromise i will take for now
MEGAN: God, it's like a fucking sport in Washington, the CYA-lympics.

• Hillary suffered a coughing fit in South Dakota today and might give up altogether tomorrow. I have been suffering coughing fits all weekend and I haven't even managed to give up smoking, so I'm not placing any bets, but apparently there's a deal in the works for the Obama campaign to Bernanke her Bear Stearns. [Huff Po]
• Speaking! Krugman defends Bernanke on the grounds that there are no unions in America sending inflation spiraling of control with their wage demands like there were in the seventies. But hello Paul, you know what the Chinese were making in the seventies? [NYT]
• Also, I bet Americans had slightly less than a trillion dollars in credit card debt in the seventies. [WSJ]
• Stuff we did have in the seventies besides unions: regulations and trade barriers. Without those things to eradicate economic growth may be so hard to achieve that Barack Obama can call himself the "growth candidate" with his proposals to focus on preschool. [Wash Post]

• Ahmadinejad said something about how Jesus will come back and kill all the Jews this time. [Breitbart]
• Sadr City: 110 degrees, lacking potable water or a decent sewage system, but  your boss will be so stoked!  there's totally decent BlackBerry service! [WSJ]
• "I used to watch this mooncalf blunder his way through press conferences and think, Exactly where do we find such men? For the job of swabbing out the White House stables, yes. But for any task involving the weighing of words?" Hitch suggests you forego Scott McClellan's tell-all in favor of Doug Feith's epic defense of Don Rumsfeld, on account of a bunch of bullshit retorts to straw arguments no one seriously makes  "that there was no consideration given to postwar planning," for instance; oh please  and also, Feith's superior prose style. Natch. [Slate]
• Can "parenting classes" save the next generation of inbred underage incest victims from the clutches of Fundamentalist Mormon mind control? Well… [AP]
• Ted Kennedy's brain surgery was successful. Now comes the fun part: radiation and chemo. Good luck.[WSJ]
• Matt Drudge as microcosm for the nation's ideological shift. [Politico]
• Henry Louis Gates talks to James Watson and finds him to not be a racist but a "racialist"; Gates explores his own love-hate relationship with DNA; generally depressing story reveals James Watson has a low IQ. [TheRoot]

MOE: Okay I hope your weekend was better than mine.
MEGAN: Mine involved shopping for bridesmaids dresses.
MEGAN: The other 2 bridesmaids were sizes 2 and 4.
MEGAN: I was sober.
MOE: I love this whole strategy whereby Bill Clinton keeps offering voters the chance to have Obama for vice president. I wonder if I could make it a self-fulfilling prophecy if I just kept going around telling some guy's friends that I was destined to be his wife? I mean, I bet a girl could pull that off. But how fucking crazy would that bitch be? Anyway Obama won in Wyoming. Do we know the delegate split yet? He's favored in Mississippi. Hillary's still behind. But whoa! She's on the cover of Newsweek. I stop paying attention whenever I find myself nodding in agreement with some piece of writing and then realizing it's Peggy Noonan. Not that that happened, no
MEGAN: The vote count was 60-40, and the delegate split was 7-5. He picked up 2, basically. Drip drip drip.
MEGAN: But, yes, I think the Clinton camp using the whole "dream ticket" idea is a load of hooey meant to convince voters to vote for her even though she knows it will never actually happen like that.
MEGAN: I also think it's as presumptuous as a bunch of other people have said for the person who is NOT CURRENTLY WINNING the delegate count/popular vote to offer the front runner the number 2 spot on her ticket.
9:15 AM
MOE: Well Tom Daschle basically said the same thing.
MOE:

"It's really a rare occurrence, maybe the first time in history, that the person who's running No. 2 would offer the person who's running No. 1 the No. 2 position," Daschle said.

(The amazing thing was not that they lifted the concept from Walter Mondale's '84 run, but that the answer to the question "Who are you safer with?" was, The Woman. Not that people really view Hillary as a woman, but still: That would not have been the answer even 20 years ago.)

Among the disclosures made by Feith in "War and Decision," scheduled for release next month by HarperCollins, is Bush's declaration, at a Dec. 18, 2002, National Security Council meeting, that "war is inevitable." The statement came weeks before U.N. weapons inspectors reported their initial findings on Iraq and months before Bush delivered an ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Feith, who says he took notes at the meeting, registered it as a "momentous comment.

He reports, as others have, that Franks, who commanded the U.S. invasion force, treated him disrespectfully, sometimes rolling his eyes when Feith asked a question. But he indicates that Franks's disregard grew partly out of the general's lack of interest in planning for the postwar period. When Feith tried to talk to him about one aspect of that, Franks walked around the table, leaned over and said, "Doug, I don't have time for this [expletive]."