[Havana, August 11. Image via Getty]

A girl helps to make a passacaglia with Cuban flags and pictures of Cuban leader Fidel Castro on August 11, 2009 in the Luyano neighbourhood in Havana. Fidel Castro, president for five decades before retiring in ill health, turns 83 on August 13. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)

MEGAN: Good morning! Did you hear? Apparently Spain's President Zapatero is nearly as bad as Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro. And Spain's apparently in Latin America.

JASON: I heard about that. Very maverick. But you must indulge me a brief veer off topic.

MEGAN: Okay, but first Russia and now Spain? Whatever happened to attacking Grenada?

JASON: Kenley? From Project Runway? You are just the FUCKING WORST EVER IN LIFE. You are an awful, undermining, leprous, personality-crippled knee biter whose every utterance causes me pain - like white hot needles. OH DEAR GOD BUT YOU ARE AWFUL KENLEY. AWFUL! I see that in the next episode, Tim Gunn tells you to lose the "sarcasm and the facetiousness," but what's left, Kenley? What's left? A thin puddle of oozing, malodorous pus with a tweaker's take on the 1950s? I HATE YOU. I HATE YOU LIKE I HATE FELINE LEUKEMIA.

Okay. So, now. Something about Spain?

MEGAN: Dodai's post on Project Runway will be up soon!!
Anyway, apparently, we're contemplating war with Spain, too. I guess once we're done bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bombing Iran.

JASON: Well, okay. Spain. Yes. McCain, he is Los Rebelde Original! Now he either HATES Spain or thinks they are part of Latin America or hears "Jose Zapatero" and thinks "Zapatista" or something. It's terrible. I don't hate Spain. I've never been there, but it's not because I hate Spain. As soon as the Spanish master crushed ice, I am going. Provided we are not BOMB BOMB BOMB LA BAMBAING them.

MEGAN: They put ice in sangria, just not Coke. It was a nice country. But, Iran, well, that's another story.

JASON: Well, that's a relief. Isn't Sangria banned in DC?

MEGAN: No! I have a friend who actually dug into this! In Virginia, the liquor distributors got a law passed that restaurants couldn't make sangria in advance (i.e., sell it by the glass) if it contained liquor and wine, and once it went into effect everyone pitched a fit so it's either been repealed or is about to be. Yes, I have friends enough into sangria that we looked up the legislative history when Jaleo was all "we can't sell it by the glass anymore."

Sarah Palin believes that Hillary Clinton should put aside partisanship and appear on stage with her for the sake of eventually bombing Iran and not the optics of the two of them on stage together.

JASON: Oh, well, Sarah Palin is going to reap the goddamned whirlwind if she keeps that shit up. She wants to wake up in bed with some animal that's been field-dressed by Harold Ickes? I sure would not. Speaking of, I love how they're making a big deal about Palin "going to the U.N." when she's apparently going to just be yelling at Ahmadinejad from the safety of Rudy Giuliani's cosmopolitan playground. She's going to CLARIFY her position on Iran? OOOOH. That's SURE to be REALLY interesting. For a woman who's touted as Alaska's Greatest Moosehunter, she seems to do a lot of shooting fish in a barrel.

Anyway, they should just send Amy Poehler. That way there would at least be one person there not offering a pale imitation of a stateswoman. And HRC can assiduously continue to not degrade her brand by equating it with Palin's.

MEGAN: Welll, but she'll meet other world leaders that also want to yell at A'jad. And then, as he exits, their eyes will meet across the plaza, the music will swell, the yelling people will seem to quiet around them. Time will stop as their love blossoms, Jason. It'll be a new era in America's policy toward Iran, one filled with musical montages, Central Park carriage rides and hot, sweaty sex between two uptight brunettes. And Hillary Clinton, with nearly as sensitive a gag reflex as my own (just ask Bill and that one ex-boyfriend of mine), needs not to hurl on camera, so she's opting to miss it.

JASON: Naturally, some of the Jewish organizations are seeking to have the invitation to Palin rescinded:

The National Jewish Democratic Council called late today for Palin's invitation to be lifted as well. "Monday's protest against Ahmadinejad is too important to be tainted by partisanship," Marc R. Stanley, the council's chairman, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the campaign of Senator John McCain is much more interested in scoring political points than insuring there is bipartisan solidarity around the anti- Ahmadinejad efforts.

"Therefore, we call upon the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations to withdraw the invitation to Governor Sarah Palin and we applaud Senator Hillary Clinton's decision to not attend the rally after the attendance of Palin was announced."

MEGAN: It probably doesn't help that the Republican Jewish Coalition is running anti-Obama push polls.

JASON: And that's what happens when your convention speech includes a drop in, quoting Westbrook Pegler.

MEGAN: Oh, well, sure. But Palin's a Republican. Quoting notorious anti-Semites who also advocated for the assassination of RFK is cool as long as you're deeply committed to hating Iran and the Palestinians and whomever else we're supposed to hate. It's such a long list, I keep forgetting it all.

JASON: Half the country is on that list!

MEGAN: And like most of the rest of the world, it seems.
Anyway, so, someone hacked Palin's email. Yawn.

JASON: Yes. I saw that. Sort of couldn't avoid that!

MEGAN: Oh, wait, it proves that — as she's all but admitted to — she uses her personal e-mail for business. Great. Well, now that it's been hacked, both accounts are wiped from the servers and can't be retrieved. Way to go hackers! I know this because my Yahoo account got hacked a few months back and the guy erased my entire inbox and Yahoo was like, well, it's gone. Sorry.

JASON: Yeah. Naturally, there doesn't seem to have been anything INTERESTING in her inbox. Pictures of her family. Some phone numbers. Someone wrote her an email telling her that God was awesome.

MEGAN: God is pretty awesome, She and I totally get beer together sometimes and bitch about men. She apologizes for fucking that up a little, but free will seemed like a good idea at the time.

JASON: Real game-changing stuff! But Gawker got it, and the pageviews that come along with it. So, that will all be a part of one Nick's "SUCK IT ALEX AND CHOIRE, LOOK AT MY TOTALLY AWESOME SITEVIEWS" posts.

MEGAN: Which I read with rapt attention and think are incredibly genius. You know that.
[Tries to distract Jason with shiny things] Hey, look, Palin's the CEO of Alaska!

JASON: I view myself as the CEO of my junk.

Oh. I am petitioning Arlington County High Schools to get Nick's posts entered into the AP English curriculum. Honestly, they are an improvement over TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES.

MEGAN: I mean, though, what isn't an improvement over Tess? It's not Hardy's best work. There's no metaphorical emasculation through inadvertent castration. (Yes, I've read a lot of Thomas Hardy. Who can identify that book and impress me?)

JASON: See. That's what Nick provides! Metaphorical emasculation!
Speaking of Fiorina, Sam Stein told me yesterday, upon his return from seeing Our Lady Of The Elite Elitism Haterz, that she used Fiorina's "captive to choice" line. Or whatever it was. The Democratic Party holds women captive on abortion? That one? That beautiful marriage of corporate PR and gender subjugation?

MEGAN: I know, except she called it a noose!

JASON: A noose? Nice.

MEGAN: But, you know, not around African-American women, of which she presumably knows many. Lynn Forester de Rothschild totally has black friends.

JASON: Oh. The Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild is straight gangsta. The Lady Lynn will take up the cause of ensuring women that they know they shouldn't be captive to the idea that they are more than a sack of meat to jack sperm into.

MEGAN: The tyranny of choice shall not ruin this great nation! Lynn, please come save me from my right to have an abortion if I get pregnant from a sexual assault, and stroke my hair at the hospital and tell me how good it feels that we didn't elect an elitist. And maybe could you help pay for my rape kit? 'Cause I'm gonna need the help once John McCain makes my health insurance unaffordable and Palin charges me for it.

Oh, God, Karl Rove speaks! He doesn't think everyone will love Palin forever, but someone forgot to let him know that the new talking point is not to call Obama a first-term Senator less they remind people that he's been in office in the Senate longer than she's been a governor.

JASON: I think Rove is late to the party with that revelation. But back to Fiorina, she's not only making sure women are held captive to choice, she made sure that American consumers weren't held captive to only being able to by quality computers, by ensuring them that they'd have the choice to buy Hewlett-Packards. Which are like a motherboard shoved inside a cows ass.

MEGAN: Wait, didn't Carly nearly ensure that no one had a choice to buy HPs, what with almost driving the country into the ground?

JASON: Yes. I didn't say Carly was GOOD at her job! Only that she got a shit ton of money to leave it. Yesterday, when I heard that McCain was going to make her disappear, I wondered if she was expecting another $21 million severance package.

MEGAN: Not even Karl Rove gets that much, and he doesn't suck at his job.

JASON: I'm not sure how this relates, but you want to know what the Sarah Palin baby name generator gave me for my name?

MEGAN: What?

JASON: Taupe Armageddon. So, what can I say. This Sarah Palin thing hasn't been ALL bad.

MEGAN: I think I might beat that: I am "Tangle Jig Palin."

JASON: OMG. We have the best Sarah Palin names ever.

MEGAN: My Sarah Palin child alter-ego should totally go hunting and drink beer with your Sarah Palin child alter-ego.

JASON: "Tangle Jig Palin" sounds like some sort of hallucinogenic tea!

MEGAN: Which we should drink deeply of while riding in an airplane shooting at wolves!

JASON: We will drink Sangria with Jose Zapatero! And visit Hillary Clinton in New York.

MEGAN: Who will totally be our mom's new BFF if only that mean Obama man will stop trying to come between them because they both totes know what sexism is like.

• The Arizona co-chair of the McCain campaign gets charged with all manner of bribery and corruption and yet again McCain escapes unscathed because the whole thing makes the Bush Justice Department look way worse. [DailyKos]
  
• Which is why McCain gets to spread all sorts of untruths about how Barack Obama wants to bomb Pakistan and cheat on his taxes without anyone but America's voters really paying attention. [Media Matters]
  
• Remember when Moby and Natalie Portman used to do it? No? Then this is the post for you. [NY Mag]
  
• Everyone was on us to write about that inane "wow girls use the internet too OMG!" story in yesterday's Times. God was that dumb. I feel less empowered being a girl who used the internet to read that fucking story. [Doree]
  
• McCain hopes Fidel Castro "meets Marx soon." I think the only medium nuanced and sophisticated enough to adequately respond to this sentiment is South Park, but it does make the whole afterlife concept sound kinda fun, no? [Reuters]
  
• Enron: where are they now? Well, Jeff Skilling is in jail for the next twentysomething years, Andy Fastow gets out in five, and some bankers who skimmed a few million from some phony partnership — "victims," really, of Skilling's "culture of greed" — are about to go to prison for three years apiece. I wonder if Ken Lay has met Marx? [Time]
  
• The Hillary campaign is not looking so good. [Economist]
  
• I guess I should really see No Country For Old Men before Sunday but Step Up 2 The Streets looks like it could be pretty good too. [NYT]

MEGAN: Happy Tuesday!
 MOE: BLARGH.
 MEGAN: Well, I think we're both much less hungover than we were yesterday.
MOE: Yeah, but that doesn't mean I have anything remotely intelligent to say. The Dane Cook of inspiring people is about it. Ha ha ha and I just plagiarized myself. Also Pakistan is not voting Musharraf back in, but I don't really know what that means other than "so yeah if that was the intention of those guys who made that rogue sunroof kill Bhutto the terrorists won!" And then also oh yes Fidel Castro resigned. But like I read that on Perez months ago!
MEGAN: Perez is so prescient. A really old guymight not being able to run the country forever? Who woulda thunk.
And, yeah, it's hard to understand why al Qaeda thought it would be a good idea politicall to assassinate Bhutto (who wanted to eliminate them) other than maybe they figured they could bribe her briberiffic husband? Or they thought maybe Uncle Pervy was going to get away with putting off elections, like, forever? Or, you know, maybe crazy homicidal megalomaniacs who think they should run the world don't really have good motives?
  
It's so hard to understand all that.

MOE: Oh look! Speaking of megawhatevers there's a fun slideshow on the WSJ website to take you through memory lane with Cuba-US relations. The Bay of Pigs pix are kinda fun. And United Fruit...remember that racket? Good times. Anyway so as you can understand the challenge for any communist country these days is how to be more like China and less like Russia...blah blah do we have any good dirt on Raul?
MEGAN: He's also really old.
MOE: Oh, that's okay, as long as he abstains from smoking and keeps his weight under control he can live into those great golden John McCain's mom years right!
MEGAN: Wow, what great research! Being healthy means not dying sooner!
  Raul looks like he smokes to me, though.
MOE: Yeah I was thinking the same thing. It's probably like treason in Cuba if you don't smoke. They send you to Guantanamo!
MEGAN: Do you think they make everyone drink mojitos, too? I could weirdly stand to have a mojito right now.

5 minutes
MOE: Nah man all I want mornings like this is uppers. So here, readers, is your primer to Raul. On the menschness scale he seems just this side of Li Peng. But maybe he'll fix the economy! Because after all, exporting tainted blood thinners is better than exporting... nothing at all! (;-) exiles!)
MEGAN: That's, like, totally the old Chinese slogan!
MOE: Okay should we talk about the ELEPHANT/DONKEY/WHATEV in the room which is to say the Obamas keep fucking up? Barry stole a whole like 20 words from Deval Patrick and then Michelle Obama said it was the first time in her adult life she'd been proud of her country. Now: that is kind of self-aggrandizing but is it true? Mickey Kaus says even Dennis Kucinich could find something to be proud of but um he is also deep in beautiful love!
Have you ever been proud of your country?
  
It's a weird question, bc you're thinking, "the whoooole country"?
I was kind of proud of my state when it ousted that dead baby senator by 20 points. But it's not like that was a very difficult decision for anyone to make.
MEGAN: I don't know that I've ever really been proud of "the country." That's such a vague concept to me. My initial reaction is, frankly, no. But I've never been one for group identity, anyway. And it seems like it would have to be on the whole, and do I feel like, on the whole, our actions are worthy of group-think pride and I'm not sure that if I look at the 30 years I've been an American that the balance tips in its favor.
But I'm a pessimist and a cynic. I don't think I'd be "proud" of any country. A country isn't an entity, it's a social construct.
And, on the plagiarism charges, if you look at the definition, it's the unauthorized use of someone else's work. By all accounts, Deval Patrick told Obama to do it. I think it was stupid of Deval Patrick to do it and stupid/lazy of Obama's advisers to let him do it, but it's not "plagiarism."
MOE: Yeah and what does usually result from a large nationalism-fueled group of people hoping to take part in something bigger than themselves and make their heirs proud etc. etc. it's like "um wars."
 
MEGAN: Yes. That's sort of my problem with national pride, I think. I minored in German history, so it makes me even more uncomfortable.
MOE: Well the insane thing about the plagiarism thing is that the Clinton camp is basically saying, it would be completely different if Hillary lifted a line or two from someone's speech because no one is accusing her of running on her rhetoric." And you're like "Um bc Hillary Clinton is not running against Hillary Clinton?" It's so mindbogglingly circular. But yeah Michelle's statement is going to get linked back with the whole flag pingate and he's in trouble.
MEGAN: Flag pins are just ticky-tacky. Period.
I mean, it just seems like one of those super insidery things that hardly anyone is going to care about in 3 days and if Obama had done it on Wednesday last week it wouldn't be an issue in Wisconsin. But, because he did it on Saturday and it was widely reported yesterday, it's going to hurt him in Wisconsin, I think. It's brilliant on the part of Clinton's campaign, even if I disagree with the word choice.
And even if I roll my eyes at both of them. Because I've seen Obama's version and Patrick's version and I didn't love it the first time and thought it was ineffective the second.
MOE: It's so completely mindbogglingly retarded this scandal though!
 
MEGAN: You don't campaign on the scandals you want, you campaign on the scandals you get?
 
MOE: This is the Clinton campaign, guys! BECAUSE THEY ARE SOOOOO SUBSTANTIAL.
MEGAN: I mean, I think it's clear that she can't win on being Obama-y positive in public no matter what because it's not believable to too many people and because it's not her voice.
And I think (and have read in the comments here before) that people actually want to see her play rough and go negative because they see that as how Dems will defeat the Republicans in November.

MOE: The proud of my country thing is a lot more troubling. Because while its not easy to find a whole lot that fits that description completely, there have surely been a lot of individual acts of heroism and compassion fueled in part by patriotism; and surely it is a big insult to anyone who has committed one of those acts in the past 20 years (like say for example, John McCain's son in Iraq; any kid who's done Teach For America; etc.) ...That said, domestic politics has, in that time, fallen into a predictable paradigm of zeroing in on people's fears and prejudices and Obama transcends that in a way that is surprising to most cynics like us, and that's exactly what his haters so hate about his campaign but I think also what people like me find compelling about it — because it's like, hey, pleasant surprise! So anyway I understand the sentiment but it betrays an arrogance and a cynicism that is going to be damaging. Hell, Obama himself wrote that he was proud of our country when the Berlin Wall fell! I personally hope she answers this one because I think she could do a decent job.
MEGAN: I agree that Michelle Obama's statements are more damaging in the long term than Words-gate.
MOE: Or anyway, they ought to be. On the other hand, I mean, a lot of it is, I think, just the fact that she speaks extemporaneously. Which is sort of ironic given her husband's PLAGIARISM scandal! But you know, her whole bit from Day 1 was like "What is this? He's just a man. Not the freaking Prophet Messiah!" And now she's like "hey, you know, the way people are reacting so passionately to his campaign is inspiring! And when's the last time I was inspired? Hey, never!"
MEGAN: Inspiration is good. I wish I had some at this very moment.

• So that's what Naomi Campbell was doing in Venezuela: interviewing Hugo Chavez for British GQ. Now they're sending her to talk to Fidel Castro. Is this a fucking joke? And if not, does she realize the whole Latin American socialist alliance thing is like, kinda last season? [Vogue UK]
  
• Selling real fur as "faux": clever move, Neiman and Saks! [Consumerist]
  
• On the heels of an ELLE redesign, Vogue is undergoing some design "tweaking" of its own. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Agyness Deyn is the face of — well, the whole entire fucking universe, including the Armani cell phone. [Sassybella]

• Marketing ploy we just can't avoid: Blackberry has asked Karl Lagerfeld, Dita von Teese, Henry Holland and others to share their favorite secret spots for the masses on their new website The B List. Karl: likes eating tacos at La Esquina in NYC. Where they put crickets in the tacos! [Vogue UK]
• Signing bottles of Armani perfume in Milan, Beyonce shared how excited she was to go to her "mum's" for Christmas. Oh god. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Whoah: Over-the-knee Uggs. [FabSugar]
• Coach: still doing meh. [Portfolio]
• Lanvin Spring 2008 ads: you know, they said the giant tent-dress trend was over, but not really getting that vibe with this one... [Sassybella]
• Valentino Spring 2008 ads: who needs plastic surgery when you've got a giant handbag to shield your face? [Sassybella]

• Senator Craigslist says that not only is he not gay, he has never been gay, including when he was arrested three months ago and also back in 1982 when he had to deny he was gay on account of all the young boy Congressional pages he'd plied with drugs and alcohol and fucked, which very neatly explains, you see, why he plead guilty.
  
• Fidel Castro, back writing editorials for his mouthpiece newspaper after being crucified last Friday by Pontius Perez Hilton, writes that a Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama ticket would be almost as "invincible" as him — and he's not exactly stoked.
  
• Illiterate L.C. ex Jason Wahler afforded a 4-karat diamond rock for his barely-leagal honey. [TMZ]

• The United States has a gun for every person and that's how come our crime is so low because weapons are deterrents against using them. [http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-08-28T174254Z_01_L28348938_RTRUKOC_0_US-WORLD-FIREARMS.xml&src=rss&rpc=22&sp=true">USA Today]
• Iran's crazypants leader Ahmadinejad is not only a great cook, he's prepared to (fill the Iraqi power) vacuum and also that jacket is so totally contraband American Apparel. (Ha ha, "contra")
• The market sucked again. Time to invest in tent mortgage lenders!