MOE: So Megan. Would you like to have a discussion of the gas tax holiday? Because you aren't the only person who is riled up about

"That might not mean much to my opponent, but I think it means a lot to people who are struggling here, people who commute a long way to work, farmers and truckers," Clinton said. She has called for a windfall tax on oil companies to pay for a gas tax holiday.
"Senator Obama won't provide relief, while Senator McCain won't pay for it," Clinton said. "I'm the only candidate who will provide immediate relief at the pump, with a plan."

"At best, this is a plan that would save you pennies a day for the summer months; that is, unless gas prices are raised to fill in the gap, which is just what happened in Illinois, when we tried this a few years ago," he said.
Meanwhile, unless you can magically impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies overnight to pay for the holiday, it could imperil federal highway funding, and cost Indiana more than 6,000 jobs.

MEGAN: I mean, it's just SO STUPID that I am dumbfounded that people buy this. Like, so, so stupid. So, she's proposing a permanent tax increase on the oil companies to fund a temporary gas tax holiday — even though, hello? Raising oil company taxes means that they will raise gas prices because gas demand is practically inelastic. Also, a gas tax holiday (were it to actually do anything to lower prices) would benefit the people that can afford to have really big, gas-guzzling cars and live in big houses in the suburbs more than those of us who have small, fuel efficient cars that we hardly drive even when we have real jobs. Plus, it takes away money from highway spending, busts the budget, yadda yadda and it's like a preview of Clinton II because no one panders to Reagan Republicans quite like a Clinton (cough, welfare reform, DOMA, don't-ask-don't-tell, cough).
MEGAN: Also, ethanol subsidies, like ethanol tariffs, are going nowhere. But, it is amusing that the corn growers trumped the oil companies (and their favorite oxygenate, MTBE) in Washington due to the stupidity of the oil companies.
MOE: Sing it, sister! What about this new poll saying Americans don't really give a shit about Jeremiah Wright, proving once again that Peggy Noonan, who does "not feel a sense of honest anger or violation at his remarks"can channel the public sentiment of America sort of like ...Bobby Jindal's old platonic girlfriend can channel Satan! (How is that for a segue???)
MEGAN: I don't think one can ever have a good segue into a story about exorcism, but that's as good a one as any. Also, reading that story I actually thought, Hmmm, wow, no wonder everyone is talking about him as VP. He seems so normal but he brings that delish Christ-y crazy that the righties love.

MOE: SRSLY OMG
MOE: OMG OMG.
MOE: First of all I have to credit Christian for noticing that on the Wikipedia and sending it to me and I have to thank you for paying the $1.50 since I, for the second time in the past fortnight, lost my credit card.
MEGAN: I love the word fortnight. Also, a former roommate with a similar habit made up for it by always memorizing her card number.
MOE: Today Bill Kristol examines the Bobby Jindal phenomenon. Apparently "no fewer than four" — does that mean possibly more than four? Or was that just no fewer than three excess words added to the word count Bill? — but anyway, no fewer than four McCain staffers are hyping the 36-year-old Louisiana governor, who converted to Catholicism from Hinduism as a youth, as a possible veep. He is old enough to be too old for Meghan McCain and young enough to be too young for Cindy. Oh yes and he was a Rhodes scholar like Bill Clinton. But let's not bury the lede here. He once had a very good friend named Susan...
MEGAN: Who had a tumor, but it was really a manifestation of her demonic possession.
MEGAN: Because, really, what tumor isn't just a symptom of possession by demons brought on by a roommate whose relative is a Hmong healer?
MEGAN: Or a mother who left something at a non-Christian shrine 30 years ago.
MOE: Right her mother prayed to a PAGAN SHRINE.
MEGAN: Also, if I can be Barack for a minute — you know, elitist — only in Louisiana would this guy be elected governor. No wonder he published this shit somewhere that one has to pay $1.50 to read it.

MEGAN: Also, Morning Joe wants us to know that Bill Clinton made 2 people faint at rallies this weekend. Maybe he's the devil, too?
MOE: Okay so there's this story in the New Oxford Review — which is, I guess, affiliated with Oxford University, and to which he has contributed numerous pieces about his faith over the years. The New Oxford Review's mission statement reads thusly:

HAVE YOU THE GUTS? Yes, many hate us. Ah, but they also fear us. That's why many others love us. If you hunger for the red meat of Catholicism, subscribe! (No bozos or sissies, please.)

MOE: Here's how it starts:

Though she had not said anything, I knew something was wrong. Susan and I had developed an intimate friendship; indeed, our relationship mystified observers, who insisted on finding a romantic component where none existed. I called her after the University Christian Fellowship (UCF) meeting — UCF is an Inter-Varsity Christian group composed of undergraduate and graduate students. Though the interdenominational group's weekly program of songs and prayers had produced the usual emotional high among most members, Susan had left the meeting in a very sullen mood. I asked her to join a group of us who were attending a Christian a cappella concert to be held on campus that same evening.

When we finally reached her dorm room, I promptly sat Susan on a bed and placed myself in a chair located several feet across the room. This physical arrangement was hardly conducive to the love and support I was supposed to be providing, but I was too scared and unsure of myself to get any closer.

They considered skin cancer a minor affliction, something that affects those whose vanity causes them to tan in the sun too long. The only friend who expressed concern was worried about the possibility of contagious cancerous cells.

MEGAN: But, I love that Mr. Used-to-be-a-bio-major doesn't use the word.
MOE: Okay, so, he touches her and she feels better.

During Susan's next wave of tears, I found myself putting my arm around her to provide both physical and emotional support. We were soon sitting on the bed next to each other, and I told her a fairy tale. Instead of tackling all of her problems at once, we took each individual concern — e.g., upcoming finals — and magically solved it. Her problems began to seem insignificant and our ability to overcome adversity soon assumed heroic proportions. We were soon laughing, and despair was definitely vanquished, at least for the night. We were both startled to find my arm around her shoulder, but she asked that I continue to hold her for just a few moments longer. I happily complied and we embraced her problems away; along with my soothing words, the simple gesture of a hug was enough to bring peace to Susan's heart for one night.

Susan did not show up at the cafeteria at our agreed upon time and made little effort to warn me of the scheduling conflict that caused her absence. This inconvenience, minor under normal circumstances, proved to be the starting point of an intense struggle of wills...Waiting for an apology, I refused to talk with Susan for a week. She decided I was being silly and refused to admit any error on her part. Somehow, we finally searched deep and found the maturity to discuss our differences.

I had recently heard a priest confidently proclaim that the Bible's words on such phenomena were never meant to be interpreted literally; he had historical evidence that incidents involving spirits were merely metaphors for tangible events.

I left the room we were in for a moment, on some flimsy pretense, made the sign of the cross in desperation, and pleaded with God for divine assistance. Seconds after I re-entered the room, Susan angrily lashed out at me, telling me she never wanted to talk with me again since I did not love her, and ran out in tears. I tried following her, to no avail. I did not understand what I had done. All I could think was, "Gee, thanks God. So much for prayer."

MEGAN: Right, I mean, as long as he wanted her to be happy and asked God and shit, everything should've been okay. What a selfish bitch, wanting human interaction rather than a deep and meaningful relationship with God.
MOE: So anyway, a few weeks pass and she's about to have an operation and they're all gonna pray on it etc. etc. etc. when it is revealed that Susan only wants sex with Bobby because SHE IS POSSESSED BY THE DEVIL.

In a voice I had never heard before or since, Susan accused me: "Bobby, you cannot even love Susan." Before I even noticed the sound of her voice, I thought it funny that Susan would refer to herself in the third person. Then the full impact of the words hit me. Forgetting the frantic students around me and even poor Susan lying on the floor, I thought of our conversation the day before. The real argument had been whether I was capable of loving Susan. I needed the answer to be yes, more for my sake than ours. I have always been a closed and relatively unemotional person and needed to know that my best friend felt that I at least could love her, due to some very strong remarks made two years before by my former girlfriend (hardly an objective source), I was beginning to doubt that I had the capacity for feeling.

MEGAN: Well, I would doubt that he has the capacity to express feeling, is that the same thing?
MOE: I love this sooooo so much.
MOE: Okay so at this point we should also point out that they had been smelling the sulphuric odor of the devil in Susan's dormroom but didn't think too much of it. Anyway, so she's writing on the floor and they're all trying to exorcise her, and for a brief beautiful moment Jindal loses his faith in Christ. And then Susan runs for the door and only Alice feels like chasing her.
MOE: It is at this moment that Jindal begins questioning his misogyny!
MEGAN: Also, why the fuck did no one think to call, like, a motherfucking ambulance?
MEGAN: Girl's got a tumor on her head, starts seizing and speaking in voices and no one goes, um, doctor? They all go running for a fucking pastor for an exorcism.

MOE:

Alice's presence countered Susan's recent burst of energy, and Alice's confidence inspired us all. Surely Crusade's experienced leader would be able to rescue us and reaffirm our faith in Christ, the Bible, and everything good. Even I felt confident enough to approach God once again; Susan's lunge for the door awakened and invigorated me. Strangely, I found myself repeating the Hail Mary until it became a chant. Being a recent convert to Catholicism, I had yet to accept the Catholic doctrines concerning Mary and considered any form of Marian devotion to be idolatry. Though I had never before prayed a Hail Mary in my life, I suddenly found myself incapable of any other form of prayer.

Susan stayed in the house of a missionary with experience in spiritual warfare in foreign countries. Her sister thought it best she stay out of her own room. Susan's roommate, the daughter of a Hmong faith healer, had decorated the room with supposedly pagan influences. Other theories explaining the night's events soon surfaced. Susan's mother had once worshipped and offered a sacrifice at a pagan altar in the Far East for her husband's health, though he had been healed, she had been warned not to repeat such practices, but had returned to that same altar in the Far East upon hearing of Susan's illness. The UCF staff member dismissed Susan's affliction as a psychological disorder, precipitated by the semester's stress, and advised her to seek professional help. Susan, who had experienced visions and other related phenomena as a child, thought her intense flirting with guys and straying away from God had led to this punishment.

MOE: Stuff like skankgate is why I wake up in the morning anymore.
MEGAN: Away
MOE: Oh god, a Bush news conference at 10:30, does he have to keep giving those?
MEGAN: I love that now that he doesn't have to be re-elected he's totally cool with talking to the press.
MOE: And the press is like, "meh you?" Nice job on Deal or no Deal..
MEGAN: Also, they have some new guy on FoxNews who is their go-to guy for talking about Wright who I hate because he's just so annoying and stupid and I think I agree with you about morning shows. But skanky is a funny word if you've never heard it.
MEGAN: Was he subordinate to the banker on DoND? Because that's be a hilarious subtext.
MOE: Speaking of which I totally checked the comments late yesterday and there was one about Mauritania retaining a slave class, which totally reminded me of China also having a slave class, which made me feel a lot better about my current situation.
MEGAN: Why cabbages in that article, I wonder?
MOE:

The newspaper said 76 children from the same county, Liangshan, had been missing since the Chinese Lunar Year festival in February, 42 of whom had already left the region to work.
"The youngest kids found in the child labor market were only seven and nine years old," it said.

The pastor who was thrust upon the public consciousness as a caricature of the angry black man emerged after an exhaustive series of performances as a more familiar television persona: a voluble, vain and erudite entertainer, a born televangelist who quotes Ralph Ellison as well as the Bible and mixes highfalutin academic trope with salty street talk.

"When we have a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet./ When we tried limiting our numbers, you said it is human rights abuse," reads a poem posted on the Internet by "a silent, silent Chinese" and cited by some students as an accurate expression of their feelings. "When we were poor, you thought we were dogs./ When we loan you cash, you blame us for your debts./ When we build our industries, you called us polluters./ When we sell you goods, you blame us for global warming."

Shell, the world's second-largest, nongovernment-controlled oil company by market capitalization after Exxon Mobil Corp., posted a 56% increase in first-quarter revenue to $114.3 billion from $73.48 billion in the year-earlier period. The quarterly revenue is close to the gross domestic product of the Arab world's most populous country, Egypt, of $127.9 billion for 2007.