MEGAN: Hey, there, what's up?
MOE: I'm getting coffee. I'll be online in 5. I really feel like its the seventies today. Even the good news on the front of the Times about the natural gas in Louisiana is kind of dark.
MEGAN: Sure, no worries
MOE: Well the good news is that former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle is in on some Kurdish oil deal. That is bound to make him a lot of money and he sure deserves it having had the foresight to liberate The Iraq and also suck up to Bill Clinton's friend that dictator guy across the border in Kazakhstan, even as Seymour Hersh and his cabal of elite treason-loving freedom haters were knocking that for being a "conflict of interest" or whatever. Thanks to Wikipedia, we know Richard Perle explained back in 2003 that Sy Hersh was basically a terrorist, so we probably don't need to spend much more time on his smears. Especially with such other positive energy deals in the works as this one that is making everyone in De Soto Parish, Louisiana, suddenly a card carrying Cadillac owning rich person! And that makes 1 place GM might make a profit this year.
MEGAN: Well, unless they bought it outright, I'd say GMAC bought a bunch of Caddies more than people in DeSoto did, but no matter.
By the way, Bush has signed off on the first military execution since 1961. It's also the first actively-pursued execution since then. Can we all take a moment to be unsurprised that the soon-to-be executed man is black?
MOE: There are six other men on military death row. Are you saying that's why he got to go first? Incidentally, I never thought much about the death penalty before The Idiot wherein the lead character is this charismatic Christ figure named Mishkin, which happens to be the name of the retiring Federal Reserve board governor who apparently wants to set inflation targets, something I don't have much of an opinion on today, although I read somewhere else that only about a third of jobless are receiving unemployment benefits these days, down from 44% in 2001 and 52% when all "social safety net" stuff was actually taken seriously, before the breakdown of the family made us all stupid and neighbors started locking their doors at night and buying homes in ever farther-flung suburbs, a trend no one thought would ever ever end but boy were they wrong, but hey, on the bright side, it's a good thing we didn't turn out Berlin, right? All opera and free education and cheap rent and richly endowed cultural institutions and SO LITTLE GDP GROWTH??? Anyway, we were supposed to "weigh in" on that Tennessee guy. Um, he sucks is my opinion.
Because all the drawbacks of breakneck economic growth are so easily reversible! Oh wait.
MEGAN: Yeah, I'm sort of all like, meh, whatever, another crazy person went on another crazy shooting and we're supposed to go, ohhhh, it's because he hated liberals? Well, maybe he just hated Unitarians, it's not like he went to the local Democratic Party offices. Why would anyone expect that the guy's homicidal/suicidal rantings would make sense? It was like 4 pages long. I haven't written a letter that long since my best friend in junior high moved to Canada, not even the one time that I got a letter from a guy I'd been dating in college 3 weeks after the school year ended telling me what a stupid, slutty, vicious cunt I was but that he was only writing to make sure that he hadn't knocked me up so then he really wouldn't have to have speak to me again. God, damn, I wonder if I still have that letter somewhere. Anyway, even he didn't merit a 4 page reply. But God knows what Mr. Crazypants in Tennessee will write when he learns GOP hero Dan Quayle is about to turn Mr. Fancypants and is in talks to join Dancing With the Stars.
MOE: Yeah, oh god, Dan Quayle, it's the nineties again all right. Except insofar as the pollution in China is hella worse.
MEGAN: They're even still defending their human rights record. Seems like it would've been easier to try harder not to be human-rights violators in the last 20 years or whatever, but whatever.
MOE: Pitchfork crapsters: previous link contains JARVIS COCKER, J MASCIS, SEBADOH, LIZ PHAIR, BUILT TO SPILL, MISSION OF BURMA annnnnnnd Flava Flav, referencing his popular reality TV show! To get us back on the Dan Quayle angle. Lou Barlow does not sound like he held up too well, but we'll forgive him because his cover of Ratt's "Round And Round" was such a sparkling contribution to the culture. Okay, and also, pollution. because it's kind of a really good story with implications for the whole next century.

Shougang Steel Group, the giant steelmaker whose name translates as "Capital Steel," was ordered to relocate most of its operations hundreds of miles away to a partly manmade island. Xiang Dong, who worked at the company for 16 years, says he cried when his unit was shut down on March 31. Most of his 600 or so colleagues were transferred to the new facility. "Of course I was sad. A lot of coworkers cried when it stopped," says Mr. Xiang, who continues to work as a caretaker at the mothballed production line. "But this is for the Olympic dream. We do some sacrifices for that."

MEGAN: Speaking of human rights records, did you know the American Medical Association didn't support the 1964 Civil Rights Act? That they deliberately shut down black medical colleges, understaffed black hospitals while forcing the segregation issues, allowed affiliates to keep black doctors out and are only just now apologizing? Because I didn't.
MOE: Oh God, I looked at that story and had no idea what it was about, other than I didn't feel like I needed another reason to disrespect doctors this week. Holy shit.
MEGAN: Ahem. I'm feeling a little disrespectful to the medical establishment this morning, though, but I will change the subject before I rage out for the 2nd time in as many days and so we can talk about the Doha talks in which they're still debating the same fucking issues they did 2 years ago when I got my writing start authoring a "humorous" round-up of the week's events in the WTO negotiations. No, for real.
MOE: Oh, great last graf:

Consider this statistic: In 1910, when Abraham Flexner published his report on medical education, African-Americans made up 2.5 percent of the number of physicians in the United States. Today, they make up 2.2 percent.

MEGAN: Yeah, that was the best kicker I'd read all day.
MOE: Anyway, I have to go sort of. But the buzz today is Obama closing in maybe on Tim Kaine for VP. Do you think Obama could win your state? Maybe I could go home and vote there since Philly seems to have forgotten I existed. Garry Kasparov thinks O needs to go hard on Russia, not a shock, the Ataturk Thought Association is worried the country is turning into Iran following a raid on their headquarters. And I'm still hung up on China, because at some point the world needs to figure out how to make the whole green collar jobs thing work, and just to spite the fucking Republicans I hope they do it in Berlin.
MEGAN: One of my friends just took a green collar job! He mostly took it, though as a third job because his former employer outsourced a bunch of their work and his second job as a tattoo apprentice doesn't pay the bills either so now he's working at a recycling plant. He says he doesn't feel very green except on the really hot days and then he does, but only around the gills.
As for Virginia, polls show it's tight, so who knows. The Washington Post keeps running stories I'm too lazy to find at the moment that Obama's operation in the state just keeps expanding and expanding so maybe? I don't think Kerry was within a point or two of Bush, like, ever in 2004.

MEGAN: Good morning!
MOE: Oh look, your icon on my Gchat screen has turned GREEN. The green of MONEY like the kind all our poors will be making once they get the GREEN COLLAR JOBS Hillary Clinton is going to create.
MEGAN: And then the world will be all ok again! Because green is, like, totes a flattering color! And you can always just snap your fingers and create an entire new economy!
MOE: You know who could create some jobs with the $20 million payout he's getting from Ron Burkle? Someone's future First Laddie!!!
Proceeds courtesy WILD OATS!!!
MEGAN: But the real question is: does that mean no more rides for Bill on "Air Fuck One"?

MOE: Okay, GOOGLE BREAK.
One of us should, you know, ACTUALLY READ this story about Ron Burkle and BIll Clinton. And the other of us should figure out what the fuck "green-collar jobs" are and how Hillary is going to motivate businesses to install all those solar panels anyway. What would you rather do?
MEGAN: Well, the "Air Fuck One" bit is in the BRAND NEW afterword to Carl Bernstein's Hillary book that is sitting on my table. But I'll Google that, if you want.
MOE: Wait, wait, WAAAAAAAIIIIIT
slow down a minute, sister.
MEGAN: Awww. I love the word "fuck"
MOE: Tell the feeble mind at the other end of your chat window what you are referencing.
There
MEGAN: So, Ron Burkle's plane, on which Bill Clinton apparently has taken a bunch of rides, is known among their group of buddies as "Air Fuck One," according to esteemed journalist Carl Bernstein
MOE: Oh! So when Bill says he's divesting from Yucaipa or whatever to "protect his wife's campaign from conflicts of interest" he
is really just protecting the campaign from conflicts of DICKNESS
MEGAN: Well, that, and from accusations that he's crawled as far up the Emiratis' collective asses as the Bushes have crawled up the Saudis'
MOE: He needed to pay off his legal bills!!! Those bitches preyed on him like a payday loan shark preys on a future green collar worker of america!

MEGAN: But green collar jobs are going to pay better! It's the wave of the future and totally not just something some political consultant made up because it sounds good!
MOE:

Severing the tie to Dubai, a U.S. ally, will remove a potentially tricky problem for Mrs. Clinton. Questions raised about the activities of sovereign wealth funds  giant pools of money controlled by foreign governments  have become a campaign issue, as the funds have made a spate of multibillion-dollar investments in such corporate giants as Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mrs. Clinton said such purchases are "a source of concern," partly because the foreign funds "lack transparency" and could be used by foreign governments as "instruments of foreign policy.

MEGAN: Off topic, I wonder what the carbon footprint is of a solar panel manufacturer.
And, I think the answer is a lot.
MOE: I think I've decided "green collar jobs" are basically a fictional construct.
MEGAN: I agree. But it sounds good, and that's what's important.
MOE: I mean, the term was made up in the 1970s, and yet their Wikipedia entry is still basically a stub. And yeah, you can say it didn't take off then because the Republicans were the ones with all of the ideas, but I'm still skeptical.
Here it says she got the idea from Pelosi.
MEGAN: I mean, my difficulty with it is the whole blue collar/white collar idea was basically supposed to be kind of a class distinction: those who worked in offices vs. those who worked in factories/with their hands. So, like, "green collar" means what exactly?
Plus, look at you and I. I guarantee that neither of us is wearing a collar of any sort right now. Does that make us a whole class of collarless workers?
MOE: Yeah we are the sweatpants workers
I have not much in the way of carbon footprint, I will tell you that much.
MEGAN: Mine's a little higher because I own a car, but it gets about 35 mpg average and I only buy gas for it every 3 weeks or so.
MOE: I'd like to see the per-capita carbon footprint of Las Vegas, including the fuel burned by all the tourists keeping the whole thing afloat. Oddly though, I don't remember them talking about this whole green collar revolution at the Nevada caucuses!
I guess most of the 35,000 people who are supposed to "benefit" from this legislation are not mostly in Nevada ...
MEGAN: Well, but if they benefited the buffet would have to cost more than $12.95.
Sort of like how most of the anti-illegal immigrant people probs don't spend a lot of time checking the papers of the bus boys at the Old Country Buffet but would balk at a $2.00 upcharge
MOE: Don't you wish a candidate would just get up and say, "Look, if you think things are bad now, I encourage you to mull the dinner the Chinese teenager assembling your television remote gets to return home to tonight. And by home I mean a probably-unheated bunk in a glorified homeless shelter. And by dinner I mean what you would probably consider a 'snack', you fat fucks!" Of course, all of this would be a hell of a lot more sustainable if Hillary managed to cap the salaries of the wealthiest wealthy people  did she threaten to do that last night?
MEGAN: Megan: I'm sure she did, but how is that a good plan? The issue with most wealthy-wealthy people isn't salaries, it's other income, and how do you go after that without going after lottery winners?
But, like "green collar economy" is sounds good, so, you know, whatever.