• Remember Oliver Clark? He asked a question at Tuesday's debate on the economy and John McCain told him he "probably" hadn't ever heard of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Well, it turns out he has a B.A. in PoliSci, a Masters in Legal Studies, and is in the midst of a Masters in Public Administration. So, he'd heard of them both, and he thought McCain's remark was condescending — and he's right. [MSNBC]
• Oh, speaking of telegraphing contempt and racism, former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating called Obama "a guy of the street" and suggested he should admit to the drug use he's already admitted to. Frank ought to admit that he's just trying out something BET founder Bob Johnson tried on Hillary's behalf in January in South Carolina that failed so spectacularly. [Huffington Post, NY Times]
• Other things John McCain is stealing from Hillary? His mortgage buyout plan. He thinks that'll make us fickle ladies vote for him. [UPI]

• If you hadn't yet been asked to swallow enough bullshit from the McCain campaign, Sarah Palin told conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham today that she and John McCain answer questions every single day and Obama never answers anything. The Bible Spice refused to be interviewed by Ingraham again. [Think Progress, PoliticoThere's a lot of scary, scary anger out there among Republicans, mostly because they think they're losing. Suck it up, assholes. [Politico, Washington Post]
• In that, though, they're just like their scary, anger-addled idol. [The New Republic]
• The fact that Obama has enough money to buy a 30 minute advertising spot on CBS (and possibly NBC and Fox) is unlikely to help McCain's temper or the mood of his supporters. [Politico]
• But it does distract them all from how the Dow is now down below 9,000 for the first time since 2003 and the Bush Administration has decided to give up on the remainder of their free market principles and nationalize more of our financial system. [Washington Post, NY Times]

• Sarah Palin is, like, so annoyed that Katie Couric, like, insisted on asking questions and talking about what she wanted to talk about instead of just letting Sarah bash Obama. Because that's how an "interview" works. To be fair, though, Palin had been on Fox News with Hannity first. [Huffington Post]
• She was also really sad when she read the papers this morning and found out that the campaign was pulling out of Michigan. They didn't tell her in advance that they were pulling out or that they don't care what she thinks about the Big Boy campaign stuff. [Politico]
• The United Steelworkers think he might be forced out of Pennsylvania, too. [Huffington Post]
• In the mean time, though, they've got an ad featuring a quote from a Famous Person. It turns out that person is Peggy Noonan, but it does make her look completely in the tank for McCain, not that anyone cares about anyone being in the tank for anyone other than Obama. [Washington Post]

• Now that California has seen how easy it is to get money from the government, they'd like $7 billion, please. [CNN]
• Now that the government owns Fannie Mae, you can stop foreclosure by simply shooting yourself. Easy! [CNN]
• President Bush already signed the bailout bill because actual fundamentals, like unemployment, of the economy continue to suck. [Washington Post, NY Times]
• Oh, and if you thought it laughable that Sarah Palin can claim to have foreign policy experience by virtue of the fact that she can "see" Russia from your backyard, McCain advisor Richard Fontaine claimed John McCain got some fucking that Brazilian model way back in the day. Angela Merkel promptly vowed to never take her eyes off him is he gets elected. That Bush back massage was bad enough.[The Miami Herald]

MEGAN: Good morning, sunshine! Is there somewhere you are at? Because I got up to thunder and lightening...

MOE: Hey sorry I've been having some issues with the internet.

MEGAN: Ugh, I feel you there. Technological ones, or just a deep and abiding hatred for it?

MOE: Well like, it seems like it's on, and I'm getting your messages, but you're the only buddy I see and the rest have disappeared. So actually it's pretty cool, sort of like if the internet could all just run the way it did in 1996 and there were no Gawker commenters…

MEGAN: So, a little from column A and a little from column B! Anyway, I just had to ask if you wanted a good laugh, because then I would encourage you to read this article about how Condi is sad that there aren't more African-American diplomats, as though that is something, like, completely outside of the control of the Secretary of State. Who does, after all, appoint the senior ones. It's that kind of lack of self-awareness that I'll miss about the members of the Bush Administration, at least until Biden brings some of them up on charges.

MOE: Wow this broad doesn't stop getting better eh? Sarah Palin charges rape victims for rape kits and Alaska for nights in her own home. When my dad was in the State Department I remember it was rather difficult at the time supposedly for a white male to make it to senior foreign service, so I guess Warren Christopher did try to do what you're suggesting and promote minorities. And I believe that if you're an underrepresented minority standards are different on the oral exam, or your application gets expedited, whatever. The thing is that basically there are not enough African American diplomats for the same reason there are not a lot of Ivy League educated African American JD community organizers; there is not exactly enough money to pay off your student loans in the State Department, although they give you a lot of free education once you're there.

MEGAN: Word on the not being enough money to pay off your student loans, I looked into it in college and could've taken a Hill gig and come out better at the end of the first year if I'd worked on moving up in the ranks on the Hill.

MOE: And you have to be extraordinarily well-educated and pass a test that is not exactly accounted for in the No Child Left Behind act. Yeah, Condi might have noticed these things before…

MEGAN: Yeah, that exam blows, and then the oral is totally based on a judgment of the reviewers and all about how you interact with the other people there, so I can see as how it might not exactly be encouraging a groundswell of new minority foreign service officers. And, notably, plenty of places charge for rape kits. Like, until very recently, North Carolina. Hell, I expected to be charged for mine, but Virginia doesn't. On the other hand, Condi does not appear to be a Palin fan, so she's got that on her side.

There are different kinds of experience in life that help one to deal with matters of foreign policy...I'm not going to get involved in this political campaign. As Secretary of State, I don't do that.

MOE: Hahahaha she doesn't think it matters that her husband rode his snowmobile to the Bering Strait that one time?? As for the oral exam, my brother passed the written and failed the oral and said something along the lines of, "look, knowing who they did take, fuck that." I'm not exactly sure what that means though. I will tell you that now you've got me sitting here thinking, "Hey, I am a white non-money motivated person with no student loans who was, at least before I subjected my brain to so many hundred successive nights of alcohol abuse, a good 'test taker', who would like to quit this industry and get out of the country, maybe learn a language or two…hey!" I don't think you need a college degree if you pass the test. Let's sign up for the foreign service exam Megan! I'm sure the government would be so happy to have us.

MEGAN: I will sign up for the Foreign Service exam, but only if you agree to take it sober and I will take it drunk and we will see what happens and write about it. I am an excellent test-taker, too, but I really have no intention of moving to Uganda for two years. One of my grad school classmates ended up in the shittiest post in the world — Quebec City. Plenty of people don't pass the oral, actually. In grad school, they made us practice it even if we didn't intend to take it and the secret is: to be a complete asshole. Don't concede. Defend your point long past the point of absurdity. That is the key to becoming a U.S. diplomat. If you concede in the face of irrefutable logic, then you'll make a shitty diplomat. Now, go forth and prosper at the oral.

MOE: Well would you look at that, the Wall Street Journal is just flat-out accusing Sarah Palin of lying! "Despite significant evidence to the contrary." My dad's first post was Reykjavik. Luckily for him — less so for my mom! — he also passed some "language aptitude test" that enabled him to go to China right after. Hey, speaking of, did you know Alaska had an "embassy" right here in New York? So internationalist of them!

MEGAN: I do love that every other state has their clubhouse in D.C., but Alaska was like, fuck D.C., we're gonna have it in the Big Apple!

MOE: What is so weird about that is that aside from my dad I never met anyone in all American diplomacy who was really like that. And I was pretty sure my dad would only do that sort of thing to piss me off. That is interesting. I wonder how standards have changed.

MEGAN: Well, maybe everyone besides your dad is, like, able to control it in their personal life, or able to fake it in their professional life? I wasn't in grad school that long ago, really. Also, I guess if the WSJ is accusing Palin of lying, this shitty OpEd proves once and for all that there really is a firewall between the reported side and the editorial side?

[laughs hysterically]. God, I crack myself up sometimes.

MOE: Ugh dammit Hamilton Nolan is in there I know it.

MEGAN: Well, Hamilton aside, do you want to talk about Reverend Wright's supposed mistress or are we way too bored with him?

MOE: I can't see, but what's funny about Wasilla charging rape victims was that it's the same total bullshit about Palin and her fiscally responsible term as mayor and by fiscally responsible I mean running up deficits big enough to put every child through a year of college. Yesterday I went to see Tom Frank speak with Lewis Lapham and he pointed out that preaching fiscal responsibility only to run up huge deficits was a clever strategy Republicans call "de-funding the left"…and after the panel I overheard some dude saying he was still angry at the Democrats for voting for the war and that he was probably voting for Nader or Paul and I just thought, "oh God, fuck everyone."

MEGAN: Well, the whole idea of lowering taxes was supposed to be to "starve the beast" only it turns out that Republicans — and their constituents — love the beast as much as tax-and-spend Democrats and the only real difference is what part of the bext each side wants to feed. Also, the OpEd is about Fannie and Freddie.

MOE: Okay Hamilton Nolan is still in the WSJ. I wouldn't roast him here if I didn't think he could take it though. I guess Gawker Media could get another fucking Journal account. Oh god and speaking of Fannie and Freddie what the fuck did I do to deserve 442 comments here????? I'm afraid to look.

MEGAN: Anyway, I can summarize for you: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a complete clusterfuck but GWB is (now) totally right for bailing them out because to do otherwise would totally drive people out of their home in droves but in a McCain-Palin Administration there will be homes for everyone and lobbyists are all to blame or maybe not all to blame but none of it is the fault of Republicans nosireebob. Vote McCain-Palin for change from the Democrats who are the source of all evil and have been running the country for the last 28 years even though 20 of those were Republican.

Apparently, the Gawker commenters were mostly discussing economics, at least for the first 100 comments. After that, I can't guarantee anything.

MOE: We never get that many comments, it is not like Crappy Hour.

MEGAN: Someone started talking about spanking, and others about Canada, so that might have something to do about that.

MOE: Also they got on me for "No one has ever listened to Bush," which is a joke of course, but on a few different levels, because who in his administration has even ever really listened to Bush? I mean, Dana Perino's statement was so absurd it's hard to know quite how to deal!

MEGAN: I mean, people don't understand that few people listen to Bush himself before formulating policy, they just do it and then go in and present a shitty alternative plan and he agrees. It's like how you dealt with your parents sometimes.

MOE: So tell me about Jeremiah Wright's mistress. Is she one of those female suicide bombers? A former concubine-protege of Putin? A Weathergirl??

MEGAN: She is a church secretary in Texas, supposedly. The picture, though, is worth 1,000 words. Also, her husband is pissed she was boning a black dude.

MOE: Whoa and what happens when Kim Jong-Il dies? God I hope this country realizes how awesome it would be for people like us if it decided to leave that decision in the hands of Sarah Palin. It could be the first summit Wasilla ever hosted! Just think of the opportunities for pork. And moose stew!

MEGAN: Oh, God, and when the thought of moose stew makes me hungry, it's time to post this bitch and get some breakfast.

MOE: Toodles love. I miss it here. I have a new family now and…most everyone is very nice!

MOE: Hey we can sort of start now if you want, though I'm still mostly reading through stuff. I just bought some beer because I think I'm the soberest person in Philadelphia right now. (The Eagles won a REALLY CLOSE game with the Rams today.) But here's something fun:

Mr. Rove said Mr. Schmidt’s increased authority — which came about after what amounted to a coup by Mr. Schmidt and other McCain aides with ties to the 2004 campaign, that gave him equal status with the campaign manager, Rick Davis — has been the best thing to have happened to Mr. McCain.

Oh God, Karl Rove. How do you do it, Karl Rove? You secure the election of a president so incompetent and widely loathed he decimates your party, then you leave the business for the media. Once in the media you commence bashing the media. You bash the media for asking questions about — not reporting, just asking around about — a rumor.

MEGAN: I am well on my way to non-Eagles-related drunkenness and I still cannot believe Steve Schmidt. Or Karl Rove. Like, seriously, did we watch the same speech? Only I thought it totally bombed and I talked to a shit load of Republicans at the wake today and people thought it fucking killed.

MOE: The sordid details of which are clearly, creepily reminiscent of the (much more easily refutable) rumor you disseminated to nastily defeat your boss's rival in the 2000 Republican primaries. And eight years later, said rival's distance from your old boss being the single-most compelling trait for Republicans to safely rally around, your old cronies take over his campaign, choosing a running mate whose most salient characteristic besides her nice bod is that she was the only member of the shortlist with a dearth of accomplishments deeper than that of your old boss in 2000, and then exploit the scurrilousness of said (much less obviously mendacious) rumor about said running mate's "personal" life to smear the "media"… (And who is paying for this? The media. "I'm not in the media, I'm around the media" is I believe how Rove put it…)

MEGAN: I wonder, honestly, if Rove even takes himself seriously at this point. I mean, the Palin Blake Slate is one of the reasons she was chosen.

MOE: Nah, he can't possibly. I actually find him more amusing than offensive at this point. Although maybe that's just because I read Safire today.

MEGAN: I did not read Safire today. I honestly feel like reading columnists is like a job that I don't get paid enough to do.

MOE: Don't let it hurt your teeth too much.

MEGAN: Honestly, at the point at which he says that Broder was the only fair pundit in attendance that night, it's hard to gag while I'm laughing so fucking hard.

MOE: And in shades of Friday's "Wow, I can't believe I'm going to calm myself down by talking about Bill O'Reilly," I entreat you to calm yourself down, after taking a gander over there, with the soothing relative sanity being preached by Chuck Krauthammer.

MEGAN: Oh, wait, he said something true:

The McCain acceptance speech reads better than it was read.

Oh, wait, here he's back to teabagging McCain:

That called for McCain to set aside his longtime reluctance to recount publicly his wartime suffering.

Ummmm, you know, except for his FUCKING MEMOIRS.

MOE: Oh shit, I am starting to find Palin so relatable though! Back in Wasilla they used to call her base of support the Liquor Cabinet.

MEGAN: Man, I would totally vote for the Liquor Cabinet.

MOE: Oh dear, and here her ex-brother in law admits he used a Taser on his 10-year-old son.

MEGAN: Ugh, that is super lame. Also, did you notice that after her announcement, she took her bouffant-y twist out? One of my reporter friends was like, she wears it like that to seem taller, she's gonna have to take it out for the campaign, McCain isn't tall enough.

MOE: Oh God Janice Min Janice Minnnn I'm boycotting you now:

“She out Obama’ed Obama with her speech,” said Janice Min, the editor of Us Weekly, who said the criticism of its coverage would pass soon enough. “She came on like a supermom who is not going to take a lot of guff from anyone. The way media works now, it is impossible to separate the personal from the political, and I think her role as a celebrity — how she does on that level — could have a significant effect on the election.”

Yeah I noticed it; I believe they decreed it to be Hepburn-esque in the New York Post. Here, exhibit five.

MEGAN: I didn't tell you! David Carr interviewed me for that piece at the Vanity Fair-Google party... and didn't use my quote. But it might be because I was drinking enough that Ana Marie Cox was like... um, what are you drinking? Because I was sort of lapping her on her alcohol acquisition. That's not the best sign, probably. Ok, I've found my first reason to be actively and yet completely unreasonably against Sarah Palin, other than the whole anti-choice thing: the use of multiple exclamation points:

"New administration finally allows new input, fresh ideas and ENERGY to work with the public to shape this city!!!"

MOE: Ok and I've found my first reason to reconsider my general assertion that the media hasn't been overstepping:

And yet, you get the feeling that at the end of the day, she could shake out that lustrous mane (longer than any other major female U.S. political figure's) and get it on with her man. She wears skirts that are quite form-fitting and often goes without stockings. As ZZ Top might say, she's got legs, and she knows how to use 'em. When Sen. John McCain introduced her at an Aug. 29 campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio, she was wearing open-toed red patent leather shoes.

That is the resident fashion critic at the LA Times.

MEGAN: Um, fucking gross. Also, I have peep toed pumps, that obviously means I'm a fucking whore.

MOE: Well you're obviously a fucking whore. But so am I and I have three pairs of shoes, everyone knows that.

But, oh my God and she is totally the Britney Spears of MILFs.

Palin held her baby in her arms as the warden drove a short distance around the facility, said corrections director Joe Schmidt, who sat next to Palin. A few days later, the governor got a warning from her public safety commissioner that someone had complained that she did not strap Trig into a car seat for the ride.

Palin dismissed the complaint as petty, and the commissioner, whom she appointed, took no formal action. But the incident shows the degree to which family and politics are bound together in Palin's career.

MEGAN: Yes, I mean, shoes do not equal whore, like, wtf is the LA Times fashion critic talking about?

MOE: Um, is that really what "the incident shows" Washington Post?? Or does the incident show that SARAH PALIN IS A TERRIBLE MOTHER WHO NOT FOR NO REASON AT ALL LEAKED AMNIOTIC FLUID ALL OVER THAT PLANE (or whatever.)

MEGAN: Ok, well, that doesn't say back seat or front seat, plus it doesn't mention whether she was breast feeding or not. I dunno, I got kicked out of a bar for being there with a pregnant friend who was like I JUST WANTED ONE GLASS OF WINE. Also, my vagina leaks a lot, particularly when I'm ovulating. I'm like sloppy, annoyingly wet.

MOE: Ugh that is so annoying. Didn't they read the story about how you can actually binge drink during pregnancy so long as you only do it a few times a month or so?

MEGAN: I don't know, they were complete assholic assholes about it.

MOE: OOOOOOH maybe you are just female ejaculating all the time like those women in those other stories who have orgasms all the time and have to strap miniature vibrators to their underwear just to get through the day????

MEGAN: Nah, when I was a teenager, I went to my doctor and she said it was normal. Like, it's my body being like IMPREGNATE ME!! But, fuck that bitch, I have an IUD.
Anyway, so if she got 600 votes in her first election and 900 in her second, then despite what Mitt Romney said, she didn't get as many votes in two elections as Joe Biden got in Iowa.

MOE: Hahaha oh Mitt Romney, please watch him now in this clip I made of that speech — well actually I had Nick McGlynn make it, thank you Nick — but I sat through the speech for the purpose of conveying in 42 seconds how insane it was. And I was pretty sure that crap about Biden getting fewer votes was, in Noonan parlance, "bullshit" but thanks for that.

MEGAN: I heard that and I was like... yeah, there's no way that's true. I used up 90 percent of my internet connection Wednesday night proving it.

MOE: Yeah, the thing that sucks about these Republicans is that they don't care if you fact-check them. I really wish Plouffe or whoever could just get up and say something equally outrageous and blasphemous like…hold on…like how about, "Sarah Palin ran a town that is smaller than many high schools!" Oh wait, that's true, hm, or like, what about "Sarah Palin's fiscally conservative policies managed to sink that tiny little town into enough debt to buy a brand-new Prius for every household in it TOO BAD HER HUSBAND IS THE TOOL OF ALL THOSE STUPID OIL COMPANIES." Ughhhhhh but that would also be true I think!

MEGAN: Oh, shit, another convention story I meant to mention: I met David Gregory in a Starbucks. He's replacing Matthews and Olbermann as anchors. Only, back at Wonkette (now erased in this server migration), I posted this video of him dancing to Mary J. and my friend Eric Brewer tracked him to a video of Obama dancing on Ellen and he had a poll about who was better and Gregory won. So, I was like, hey, so, like, I did this video of you and Obama dancing and he was like, oh, I totally saw that. And then I blushed and got totally awkies.

MOE: Well in lieu of lending credence to the scurrilous rumor I heard about Palin's heroic son in the Army I am going to ask you if you read today's Filkins piece in the Times Magazine about how Pakistan has turned into the Minneapolis of the Terrorist Convention and part of that is flaky Benazir Bhutto's fault for thinking it was a good idea to arm the mujahadeen back when we also thought that was a good idea, oh and did we mention history and that repeating itself thing, as comforting as it is to know that people make the same stupid mistakes and repeat all the same fuckups even in places where the average citizen doesn't consume a metric tonne of alcohol every month, it is not very comforting at all actually. Here it is. Obama was good on this issue the other night with O'Reilly, incidentally, not that O'Reilly had any idea.

MEGAN: I keep meaning to watch the O'Reilly shit, but my parents don't have cable. Anyways, anyone who elects Zadari deserves what they get, sort of like how I feel the overwhelming majority of people who either voted in GWB for a second term or — more likely — didn't fucking bother to vote better not now be bitching about their adjustable rate mortgage, I tell you what. Even people in Pakistan know he's a Thaksin-level corrupt asshat — and they probably have some idea who the fuck Thaksin is, too. Also, I object to the assertion that I consume a metric tonne of alcohol a month. That's why I mostly drink wine and hard liquor, to keep the tonnage down.

MOE: Oh god yeah Thailand, we could discuss that too, and Freddie and Fannie, THE NIGHT COULD LAST FOREVER. But what's hot right now? I thought the Times magazine story by Frum on Republicans and income inequality was interesting, if namely for its incongruity following a week during which the proverbial Bullshit, as Janice Min so eloquently pointed out, triumphed so decisively over Shit That Actually Matters.

MEGAN: Wait, income inequality? Get yourself some fucking bootstraps, yo. Does anyone even fucking know what bootstraps are?

MOE: Whoa, the origins of all the Palin kid names! Turns out that taken together they all come together to mean "CANNY ATTEMPTS TO DEFLECT OBVIOUS CORPORATE BEHOLDENNESS BY INGRATIATING SELVES TO NATURE FETISHIZING IDIOCRACY" or just "FLAGRANT POLITICKING RIGHT FROM THE START." Fuck I somehow didn't realize Sarah Palin married Todd because she was knocked up. That is so rouge cou.

MEGAN: I mean, it's like a month, tops that they knew. Chances are, like other super-Catholic friends of mine, they boned a little early and found out a couple weeks after the wedding regardless.

MOE: Nah nah Track was born eight months after they eloped "to save money." I dunno, it's funny. God, who gets pregnant the first time they have sex? Well, I have a friend whose parents did, but how crazy. Oh man it's getting late though I guess. And there's still so much! Damn the weekend for being over.

MEGAN: Well, luckily, I opened a magnum of wine! I got plenty of time!

MOE: Ok i'm getting another beer. Dogfish 90 minute IPA, not that they're sponsoring me. Not that i would LET THEM.

MEGAN: I've got a Yellowtail Cabernet. I am not going to pretend if a winery wanted to sponsor my blogging I would deny them the opportunity, but I would rather it be something non-corporate like Guglielmo or Hecker Pass, two of my favorite family wineries.

MOE: Ugh are we too far-gone — and too far down on the moral authority pay grade — to weigh in on Biden's belief that life begins at conception? Because personally I am inclined to say "well sure it does, so what" but you all know how paranoid I am about seeming "flip."

MEGAN: I mean, Biden's a Catholic, that's the party line, right? I just don't buy that. I don't believe it in the slightest. I'm not sure I believe in a soul. Potential life? Ok, maybe, but all evidence is that plenty of potential lives are ejected regularly from women's bodies. I just... I just don't buy that a zygote is A Life.

MOE: Right, well the "soul" is a different matter. As I think we might have discussed before, there's a genuine debate within the believers in souls as to how a soul could be formed at conception, then split into two separate souls two weeks later. Anyway "Life" …bacteria is life. Now human life is more important than animal life, but ughhhh if embryo life or fetus life was as precious as regular fully formed human life you would think there would be a huge public health campaign to finally put an end to the mysterious plague that silently kills as many as one in four humans before they even have the chance to get heartbeats! But there is not. And now I am tired.

MEGAN: My sister's fiancé was just asking when I was going to bed. I could stop drinking and try that out.

MOE: Yeah this is the longest Crappy Hour ever already I think. I've been drinking really slow and am still tired and I think that is a sign.

MEGAN: Ok, so, I'll check you at an abortion-esque ungodly hour on Tuesday.

MOE: Oh, but that David Gregory story was awesome.

MEGAN: There's nothing like embarrassing oneself in a Starbucks full of Republicans to make embarrassing oneself on the Internet seem totes minor.

MOE: Yo I am here, barely, at an airport hotel that is not actually an airport hotel, more an airport adjacent hotel located nearby a Westfield Mall, but this is where the JetBlue flyer with the friendly Nationwide Hospitality Inc. operator got me the $69 rate, and my god, I am tired, maybe because here it is five in the morning, but news that New Jersey school officials want to ban Red Bull just reminded me I am no longer in school and therefore should probably go locate myself something containing Guarana.

MEGAN: Doing Crappy Hour from the West Coast sucks balls in a way that no one who hasn't done it can ever understand. But that might be because I consider 5 am a time to strive to stay up until, not an hour to get up at.
MEGAN: If it helps, check out the long cool drink of water in this picture and rejoice that somewhere in the bowels of CNN.com, there is a Jezebel looking out for us.
MOE: Yeah I actually forgot to reset my alarm and so woke up around 3:45, but holy SHIT that picture is ridiculous. The gun is um scary though. Also, Obama's hip is hurting? Isn't that a body part whose inflammation we'd usually associate with John McCain…or his mom? Unless…

MEGAN: Um, I'll just say that sometimes after sex my hips hurt, but I have an old ballet injury to explain that, but if that's why Obama's hurts, well, go Michelle!
MEGAN: In other flotsam, by the way, SF mayor Gavin Newsom got straight-married this weekend... in Montana.
MOE: Yeah I bet the wedding I was at was better. Um before I forget can I just say I am fucking sick of shit like "Caroline Kennedy for VP???!!?" which is the only thing worse than "Chuck Hagel for VP????!!!?" which is to say, "WHY AM I READING THIS GO ON VACATION!!!!??!!!"
MEGAN: Everyone for VP!!!

MEGAN: I mean, McCain's got to pick someone before the Olympics start because no one will be paying attention otherwise, or so goes the meme, but I'll bet Obama's VP will interrupt Olympic coverage.
MOE: And then there's this story. I guess I'll listen to it, because really what better things do we have to do? Discuss the half trillion dollar budget deficit planned for 2009 — that's a record, by the way — or how the Frannie Freddie bailout is supposedly the largest government bailout since the New Deal?? Yeah, didn't think so. Although who knows, it's still early, I could see us getting into that shit.
MEGAN: We could talk about the protests at the Vatican to lift the ban on birth control, too.
MOE: Oh how serendipitous I was thinking of lifting my personal ban on that in response to public sentiment as well. I wonder if someone told the Vatican about me and they were like "oh jesus christ we do not want to be responsible for that person procreating." Seriously though, I don't know if this is going to have much of an impact in the Benedict administration.

MEGAN: I'm going to say... exactly none. The Pope listens to God, not the people of the world OR the AIDS rate in Africa. That's God's plan, or do Catholics not believe in predestination? It's so hard to remember CCD.
MOE: In other news does another fifty pointless deaths indicate violence returned to The Iraq? Petraeus seems to think maybe . Oh, and is Afghanistan a narco-state …I kind of want to actually read that one, because I found myself realizing the other day that I really did not know how Colombia had come to control 90% of the cocaine trade exactly and whether there are other countries with power vacuums and the climate and topographical conditions to get in on that, since heroin is, like, probably not as big a moneymaker.
MEGAN: Hahahaha, "returned" to Iraq. You're such a comic genius. Or else Petraeus is.

MOE: Hey I am going to miss how you actually get it when I am being sarcastic.

MEGAN: Although my dad got up and made me coffee this morning, I have yet to get a chance to get up and drink it because in your honor I read Maureen Dowd. That was painful.
MEGAN: But probably not quite as painful as Barack having to submit to an interview in Paris from La Dowd.

MOE: oh GOD.
MOE: I'm not bothering to blockquote this because there's no way anyone would confuse it for anything I would write and even if you charged me with parodying Dowd I could never come up with Even for Sarkozy the American, who loves everything in our culture from Sylvester Stallone to Gloria Gaynor, it was a wild gush over a new Washington crush.

MEGAN: Or how about this awfulness: Obama kept his cool through a week where he was treated as a cross between the Dalai Lama and Johnny Depp. I mean, in my mind, she says this in a little girl voice even more highly pitched than my own.
MEGAN: OK, also, now I have to ask what the fuck?
MOE: Okay this Afghanistan story is really fucking interesting. Basically, post-September 11 Afghanistan is the one kind of situation where this drug war we've been fighting for the past 20 years really comes in handy, as we learned previously from the story of that narcotics guy who successfully interrogated KSM. But the Pentagon, by some combination of generalized Bush Administration wrongheadedness, generalized Bush Administration ineptitude, generalized turf protection and listening to Hamid Karzai, not only systematically undermined the DEA's mission in the country and everyone involved with the drug war, but the whole idea that heroin was bad at all, which in turn just led to the continued flow of this massive spigot of funding to the Taliban and sundry other evildoers.

MEGAN: Wait, Karzai is pro-heroin? Or just anti doing terribly much about it? Anyway, didn't you know that Mary Jane is the Great Satan of our time? Or is it oxycodone? Or meth? Or can we just ask what it is about modern life that so many people feel the need to alter their consciousness to escape it? Because I know what it is about my life, but I'd sort of be interested to know if I'm unique in that.
MOE:

A lot of intelligence — much of it unclassified and possible to discuss here — indicated that senior Afghan officials were deeply involved in the narcotics trade. Narco-traffickers were buying off hundreds of police chiefs, judges and other officials. Narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government. The attorney general, Abdul Jabbar Sabit, a fiery Pashtun who had begun a self-described “jihad against corruption,” told me and other American officials that he had a list of more than 20 senior Afghan officials who were deeply corrupt — some tied to the narcotics trade. He added that President Karzai — also a Pashtun — had directed him, for political reasons, not to prosecute any of these people.

MEGAN: Is there some reason it matters that they're both Pashtun? Also, in an barely-stable government, I can sort of see the reason if he thinks that the narco-corruption isn't one of the destabilizing forces.
MOE: Well the news here is that no only has opium production grown — a UN report says 80% of poppies in the south were planted in the last two years — it is funding the insurgency and making farmers rich and Afghan officials all the way up to Karzai continue to say things like "it's tradition and poverty makes them do it and we don't want you to dust our crops aerially with pesticides because our poor farmers will think it is poison coming from the sky" when such things are demonstrably not true.
MEGAN: Crop dusting didn't really make us — or the Colombian government — a ton of friends when we did it there either but we didn't exactly stop doing it.
MOE: Well we haven't apparently started doing it in Afghanistan. The point is twofold, though. It's not so much that, according to this guy, how do you keep Afghanistan from becoming the Colombia of opiates, but whether you can use what you learned in Colombia to cut off the flow of funds to the insurgency, I think, I am not through yet though. I mean, I guess eventually, as in Colombia, everyone is in the business, on both sides, and then everything is just …really violent until someone like Uribe comes in and decides to grant wholescale amnesty to pretty much anyone who asks.

MOE:

Karzai was playing us like a fiddle: the U.S. would spend billions of dollars on infrastructure improvement; the U.S. and its allies would fight the Taliban; Karzai’s friends could get rich off the drug trade; he could blame the West for his problems; and in 2009 he would be elected to a new term.

MEGAN: Awww, he's like a mini GWB, just with drugs instead of oil!
MOE: Hahaha the chief of the anticorruption commission is a convicted heroin dealer.
MOE: And here's our little microcosm of the whole damn thing:

At the same time, the 101st Airborne arrived in eastern Afghanistan. Its commanders promptly informed Ambassador Wood that they would only permit crop eradication if the State Department paid large cash stipends to the farmers for the value of their opium crop. Payment for eradication, however, is disastrous counternarcotics policy: If you pay cash for poppies, farmers keep the cash and grow poppies again next year for more cash. And farmers who grow less-lucrative crops start growing poppies so that they can get the money, too. Drug experts call this type of offer a “perverse incentive,” and it has never worked anywhere in the world.

Sort of like the drug war has never worked anywhere in the world?

MEGAN:

KarzaiBush was playing us like a fiddle: the U.S. would spend billions of dollars on infrastructure improvement; the U.S. and its allies would fight the Talibanin Iraq; Karzai’sBush's friends could get rich off the drugoil trade; he could blame the Westliberals for hisour problems; and in 20092004 he would be elected to a new term.

MOE: Or Bush could blame the Middle East for his problems?
MEGAN: Hell, that shit doesn't even work in U.S. farm policy. You pay subsidies for wheat, they grow more wheat. You pay subsidies to let marginal lands grow wild, people plant on marginal lands for a year or two to collect the subsidies.
MOE: It would be a more direct counterpart.
MOE: Okay here is something depressing (or heartening?) Check the fucking comments. Some of the stuff that has been "recommended" is basically illiterate.

MOE: Such as

2008 8:35 am
After I saw American Gangster, I knew that the increase in heroin production was no accident. I'm sure the DEA is involved in shipping the drugs back to American cities. It's no wonder we can't see the coffins unloaded at Andrews Airforce Base.
— Jane, Royal Oak, MI
Recommended by 7 Readers

MEGAN: You know, there's a growing debate about whether to allow comments on newspapers' websites for exactly that reason. Like, I know Gawker employs a person (hey, Kaila! your hair is probably lovely today!) whose job it is to weed out the crazies and I've looked in the bin and WHOO boy are there some crazy people out there who write some crazy ass shit. But I guess because newspapers have higher comment volumes, or higher crazy volumes or haven't been able to figure out how to monetize their websites, they can't manage that shit?
MOE: Incidentally that other drug is in the news today too.

MEGAN: OH, speaking of drug wars, I've seen so many freaking meth heads back here. Upstate NY was slow to come to the metholution because of the easy access to good Canadian weed, but I do believe we've finally made it into the 21st century!
MOE: Yesterday I found this old story on Gabriel Garcia Marquez advocating "outlaw American chemists" develop a kind of synthetic cocaine to rival the real deal as a way to combat his own country's addiction to easy money. But um I sort of feel like, that's how we got meth, and meth did not do much good for Colombia.
MEGAN: Or Afghanistan! Meth is for people that can't afford crack, let alone coke, or heroin shipping in for Afghanistan, and who don't mind the side effects like the black teeth and the faster progression to heroin chic and the complete wasted crazy look that horrifies me in a bar to the point where my friend has to remind me to stop staring at the meth head.

MOE: Hi everytime I wake up early I have a coffee maker explosion
MEGAN: Well, presumably you're familiar with Murphy and his motherfucking Law.
MOE: It's like shitty kitchen appliances' way of telling me it's not meant to be.
MEGAN: I think coffee is always meant to be. I think shitty coffee makers are a conspiracy by Starbucks to drive us to their stores and save their profit margins.
MEGAN: Like a failsafe device installed under a secret agreement with Krups and Mr. Coffee, that benefits both parties.
MOE: Who was Murphy anyway? The supreme court justice who signed the eighteenth amendment?
MEGAN: I believe he was just another unlikely Irishman or something.
MOE: or who signed the NINETEENTH? Anyway, what happened while I was away? Obama went to Afghanistan, the Washington Post got to the middle of a ninety-part series on Who Killed Chandra Levy? (It seems like a more easily answered question, no?) and something crazy about Barack Obama's birth certificate. I've got the dial turned to Fox and Friends so I can hear the details on that one.

MEGAN: Wait, do you mean McCain's birth certificate? I know a legal analysis has shown that the Panama issue isn't just a feint by the right wing of the Republican party but gosh I'll bet they're pissed they brought it up now. Guess who his VP is really might turn out to be relevant.

MEGAN: As for the bazillion part series, I've been following it.
MOE: It's all over the right wing blogs though apparently it's a Pamela Geller exclusive. Who says

I have decided to leave out the low level technicalities and the how-to section of this report due to a lack of time and more importantly I want to get the facts out as quickly as possible. As some of you may or may not know some asshat decided to track me down and vandalize my car and hang a dead mutilated rabbit from my front door in a lame attempt to intimidate me from proceeding with releasing any details of my analysis. They did succeed in delaying the report by a few days but instead of deterring me they just really pissed me off.

MEGAN: I never really thought Gary Condit killed her. That he was a fracking idiot, sure, but he was a Congressman, so same diff. Personally, his kids seems so far divorced from reality by the time they started speaking out I started to wonder about Chad, but that was just me being suspicious.
MOE: Oh Megan what is this "fracking" business? Tell me they didn't outlaw swear words while I was gone…
MEGAN: Oh, for Chrissakes, don't right-wingers remember that all liberals are PETA-supporting, anti-hunting, cuddly-animal lovers?
MEGAN: I just felt like throwing it in there. I was at a party this weekend with one of my friends who not only doesn't swear but gets really embarrassed when I curse and then I met a cute guy and he was like, wow, you curse a lot. And then he hit on someone else. So I'm trying it out. Fucking Washington D.C.. FUCK I can't stop, never mind. Experiment over.

MOE: I just loved that. Like fascinating threat Pamela! Should we take this to mean Patti Solis Doyle has brought over Hillary's animal cruelty-based threats team to the Obama camp? Whoever will be next??? And yeah, I didn't realize Gary Condit was seeing a flight attendant at the same time he was seeing Chandra. I am so glad I have that information, yay.
MEGAN: Or that he took he wife to dinner at Tryst the night Chandra was killed? Like, who the fuck takes anyone to dinner at Tryst? That used to be the place Congressmen took their mistresses or the women they wanted to be their mistresses back in the day.

MEGAN: I ate there once for lunch, ordered a sandwich with tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, got non-fresh mozzarella deli slices and never went back.
MOE: I blogged from Tryst one day I think. They wouldn't let me use a credit card or something even though my bill was like $35. My brother had to come bail me out. (Not Tryst's fault.) Um, it was not as bad as I was thinking when I heard that dumb name. Wait, coffee! I guess we should discuss how communities are organizing to Save Their Starbucks. Robert Putnam's heart is warmed. Are there any class cleavages or ethnic tensions a shared mission to save a premier purveyor of caffeinated beverages could not overcome? Okay, now I'm going to try and read something.
MEGAN: Do you want to stop for a moment as we drive by shoot the news and talk about James Dobson's flip-flop on John Mcain? Because, I do love a good shoe.

MEGAN: Also, on Saturday at said party I predicted to a friend that James Dobson would endorse McCain because James Dobson is interested in James Dobson's own power and James Dobson won't let himself be marginalized in James Dobson's party by not backing the candidate.
MEGAN: (Robert, I'll take that drink whenever)
MOE: Oh James Dobson. Here is my question: hasn't James Dobson already marginalized himself to an extent? I mean, Focus on the Family, when was the last time their support of a candidate really shifted an election? Fuck James Dobson.
MEGAN: Um, I'd prefer not to fuck James Dobson. You know he wouldn't be any good in bed. He'd either want to be peed on and freaky shit like that or he'd have to pop a Viagra and wait 30 minutes for a boner which he would not spend eating me out and then subsequently bonk for 2 minutes missionary.

MEGAN: (Sorry, Dad, I suppose the preceding sentence is why you told me you have gotten careful about reading Crappy Hour.)
MOE: Yeah, that's why you don't always try to visualize this shit, MC. I'm reading John Cassidy on how the economy's fucked by the way. Nothing much to report, worst crisis since Great Depression etc. etc., we need a new Resolution Trust Corporation to parse the bad debts from good ones because banks are too busy laying people off to figure out what the fuck they've got on their books, when this happened in Japan they waited too long to figure it out and that's why they suffered a decade of economic stagnation, much as the right wingers would tell you it's because they don't like laying people off in Japan and that sort of nonsense.

MEGAN: Peter Goodman also had a lovely thing in the New York Times about how maybe the one good thing about this whole economic clusterfuck is that it is exposing the weak underpinnings of Republican economic ideology and the true shallowness of Republican belief in The Market. I mean, he didn't say it like that, but that's what I took away from it. That and our rampant consumerism is a good thing because it keeps the world economy afloat but I dismissed that as part of his/our own ideological blindness due to living in such a consumerist culture.
MOE: Yeah, someone needs to do a matrix of "too big to fail." Bear Stearns was a $30 billion bailout, Freddie and Fannie involve a bunch of trillion dollars of loans, Japan once approved a $17 billion of a supermarket chain that was "too big to fail." And basically he is saying the United States itself is too big to fail, even though our balance sheet, talent base, necessity of what we sell and rampantly wasteful expenditure of the world's resources sort of makes us look like a multitrillion dollar Trump casino kept at 60 degrees year round in danger of losing its Starbucks.

MOE: That was a pretty good story, thanks.
MEGAN: Do Trump casinos have Starbucks? Because the one time I had to go to Vegas for work, I found that the Vegas has unabashedly the world's shittiest, weakest coffee bar none. Upstate NY diner coffee is better. It was like coffee-flavored water and I could never figure out exactly why they served it to us, and I couldn't find a Starbucks in any of the 3 hotels I had to work at though I did find one in the convention center I remained amazed that a 24-hour culture (ahem, market) could bear the utter lack of appropriate caffeine-delivery devices. Also, I hated Vegas. The little old ladies that worked information booths at the convention center were super-nice though.
MOE: Most casinos these days have Starbuckses.
MEGAN: Well, it's about fucking time. Where the fuck were they in 2005? I worked 12 hour days and wanted to stab myself most mornings because it would've been less painful than drinking the shit coffee at the Flamingo at 6 am.
MEGAN: Or the Hilton.

MOE: Okay, this story is sort of the one I'm getting interested in now. I would, because it's about China, specifically the creator of this video, a "decidedly unhip" philosophy student at Fudan University named Tang Jie.
MEGAN: Ok, that music is freaking me the fuck out, dude.
MEGAN: And, I have to say, I sorta like this one better.

MOE: Who is basically, like, spearheading a youthful nationalistic movement in China that is a little anti-Hollywood, a little Olympics-based, a little Club for Growth, a little Great Leap Forward? What Great Leap Forward???, a little kneejerk anti-Cafferty…it's really interesting, how this shit is basically what captures the mood in China right now the year Ma Jian's new book recalls what was and sort of might have been.
MOE: Um also if you can tell us if anything worthwhile is happening at NetRoots, and also, why the fuck you'd host a Marxist blogger convention in July in Austin of all places, I'd be stoked to learn.

MEGAN: Attackerman was there. So was Samantha Power. And I'd bet it's held in hella hot places in the summer because there's plenty of available rooms relatively inexpensively, but that's just a guess.
MEGAN: Also, it's probably good that they stopped calling it Yearly Kos.
MOE: Who is supposed to be Obama's running mate these days?
MEGAN: Oh, God, this week? Clinton's still being vetted, Evan Bayh's on the list, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Kathleen Sebelius, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, I think.
MOE: God who the fuck is Tim Kaine again?
MEGAN: Governor of Virginia. Weird eyebrows.

MEGAN: Anyway, Kaine's like the poor man's Mark Warner, who's not going to quit running for Senate, Strickland and Jim Webb took themselves out, some people are saying Chuck Hegel but that's just stupid.
MOE: Yeah, "some people" are always looking for something stupid to say. Okay, I'm going to return to China for a minute because the Olympics is happening and I just read this somewhat baffling essay about "Chinese exceptionalism" that I think tries to explain the logical underpinnings of Chinese nationalism but:

I have always admired Westerners’ abilities to articulate the rationales of their actions. They know what they are doing and why. As a Chinese, even when I know in my guts what the right thing to do is, I often cannot explain my rationale. For instance, in the Chinese culture there is a stigma on Chinese who badmouth China to foreigners.

MEGAN: Why can't we just all admit that none of us is exceptional?
MOE: Hahaha then they start wondering what the fuck 5% of the world's population is doing with a quarter of the world's resources or whatever! We just have to introduce them to the 1% of our population that controls most of that! Wait, those guys are probably in China already, getting escorted around by their pretty young Olympics ambassadors to meetings with party officials. Doh.

MEGAN: No, I'm sure that's only the top 1% of the 1%.
MOE: Speaking of…Olympic face masks: a loss of "face"? Question: do face masks do anything at all? I just feel like they'd give a triathlete some nasty breakouts.
MEGAN:

"When people come to this environment and get acclimated, they'll see they won't need" a mask, says Jeff Ruffolo, senior adviser to the Beijing Olympic Committee.

That made me chortle.
MEGAN: I mean, I guess it depends on what the super-secret bits are, but my understanding is that at least part of the pollution problem in Beijing is particulate matter, so it might help.

MEGAN: Also, the IOC has promised to postpone events if the pollution gets to bad? That can't be a good sign.

MOE: Oh man, this is the kind of quote that gets the angry Chinese internerds steamed:

Matthew Reed, a member of the U.S. triathlon team, says that seeing Olympic athletes suffering from polluted air on the world stage might not be all bad: It could embarrass China into embracing stronger environmental measures. "It's just disgusting what they've done to that part of the world," says the 32-year-old Mr. Reed, who grew up in New Zealand.

Like, um, you ever checked out the factory that makes your shoes Matty Reed? Wait I guess he is sponsored by Crocs, which makes some shoes in places with like, standards and shit. Anyway, I just checked out this guy's Photostream. He has a really cute baby. His favorite drink is a "skinny athlete." God I hate healthy people.

MEGAN: It is a cute baby. But unless the "skinny athlete" is a clever name for a vodka tonic or something, I'm bored and OH SHIT his music just loaded, people, don't click! don't click!
MOE: Oh look here an attractive audio slideshow guide to China's four major problems, perhaps Matty Reed has some ideas for fixing them. Like, maybe if everyone could complete triathlons they would not need all those cars on the road.

MEGAN: Well, I mean, would it be soooo bad if China and Brazil and India, to name a few countries, didn't keep saying that they didn't need to work on curbing pollution or reducing emissions because us and Europe didn't for more than a century so they'll get back to us in 100 years?

MOE: I don't know if you can find this, from that aforementioned New Yorker story, while I do headlines:

Because we are in such a system, we are always asking ourselves whether we are brainwashed,” he said. “We are always eager to get other information from different channels.” Then he added, “But when you are in a so-called free system you never think about whether you are brainwashed.”
MOE: ”At the time, news and opinion about Tibet was swirling on Fudan’s electronic bulletin board, or B.B.S. The board was alive with criticism of foreign coverage of Tibet. Tang had seen a range of foreign press clippings deemed by Chinese Web users to be misleading or unfair. A photograph on CNN.com, for instance, had been cropped around military trucks bearing down on unarmed protesters. But an uncropped version showed a crowd of demonstrators lurking nearby, including someone with an arm cocked, hurling something at the trucks. To Tang, the cropping looked like a deliberate distortion. (CNN disputed this and said that the caption fairly describes the scene.)

MEGAN: In fact, I can! Here's the page as it originally displayed, and the full picture. That story has been retitled (but the link from Digg still works) and the picture has been re-cropped.

MOE: Lost you there! Wait, oooh, memory lane…I should just do this every day and call it120 seconds.

MOE: God that picture is so fucking small, of course they had to crop it, it's not like the Tibet protests produced a lot of great photojournalism. And um, speaking of incendiary photos, did you guys discuss this last week?

MEGAN: Um, no, we did not. If we had, I would venture to guess that I would not care whether some guy at a party thought I swore too much because, damn, that's the opposite of sexy right there. Thank you, David Remes, for killing my ladyboner. I won't make any bad boy decisions for at least a full day now.

MOE: Yo dude check it 10 Olympic Sweethearts as chosen by Zhang Yimou of all people. Like, can you imagine if we asked Woody Allen to …meh well you know. Hey, Mia Farrow knew there was something fucked up about this whole scene.
MEGAN: dog walking

MOE: Oh sure, care about the animals.