• Dick Cheney thinks: The Gays should be happy with whatever states choose not to discriminate against them; Americans should be glad George Tenet didn't have worse intel about the link between Saddam and Osama; and the Guantanamo detainees should be happy we didn't summarily execute them. [Time, CNN, MSNBC]

• David Duke is mad at Rush Limbaugh for comparing him to that Latina Sonia Sotomayor. But he's not a racist! [ThinkProgress]
• Dick Cheney wouldn't have nominated Judge Sotomayor, but even Dick Cheney is smart enough not to call her a racistwhile he's trying to rehab his image. [Politico]
• Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, however, is not as smart as Dick Cheney. [Politico]
• Sotomayor begins the obligatory meetings-with-Senators today; let's hope she wore some comfortable shoes. [Politico]
• The Obama Administration denies that any of the images of American detainees subject to the ACLU release lawsuit depict sexual abuse, as was reported last week. Please note the careful wording. [Salon]
• The Administration also says that it decided not to release the photos because Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Malik objected and threatened to force us to withdraw even earlier than he planned, which is not nearly as dirty as it sounds. [McClatchy]
• Tom Tancredo staffer Marcus Epstein is a crazy-ass racist who assaulted a woman on the street last year because she was black, and he won't be going to law school now because of it. [DCeiver]
• Kim Jong Il's son, Kim Jong Un, who is 7 years younger than I am, will be taking over the nuclear-armed country of North Korea. This is gonna go well! [BBC]
• Eliot Spitzer has spent a lot of money on sex workers. [NY Times]
• Norm Coleman has spent a lot of money masturbating to his electoral fantasies in Minnesota courts. [NY Times]
• Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has finally learned how to relax and submit peacefully to our new Chinese overlords. [NY Times]
• You are correct: I have sex on the brain.

• The Federal Elections Commission dismissed a complaint about the use of campaign money to pay for Governor Sarah Palin's clothes, so she's in the clear on that one. Now about donating them... [Anchorage Daily News]

• Unrelated: Palin issued a statement calling RNC Chairman Michael Steele "bold and courageous". Then, everyone wondered if she's noticed how much Republicans hate him. [Politico]
• Barney Frank has no problem engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent, which is why he went on Lou Dobbs with Michelle Bachmann. [TPM DC]
• Newt Gingrich thinks that being dishonest should disqualify one from being Speaker of the House. Related: I am laughing. [Time]
• The Chinese Uighurs, who Americans imprisoned in Guantanamo at the behest of the Chinese government, want to know why Newt Gingrich is such a dickhead. [Huffington Post]
• Apparently, they've never heard of William Smith, who's now Chief Counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee and fervently believes that LGBT Americans are child rapists. [Legal Times]
• Donald Rumsfeld's spokesman is denying that the former Defense Secretary liked his briefings with a side of Bible quotes. [The Atlantic]
• Someone stole a hard drive of Clinton-era information, so keep an eye out on eBay. [Politico]
• Obama is pressuring Democrats to not challenge New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in the primary next year. [The Hill]
• The Iranians swear they have a nuke that can reach Israel. [Huffington Post]
• Congressional Democrats have decided we're definitely not closing Guantanamo. [NY Times]
• Congressional Republicans would like the ability to deny our access to reproductive health care back, since Obama is all trying to find common ground, such as. [The Hill]
• But Ted Kennedy's brain cancer is in remission! [Politico]

MOE: Okay, this is the kind of paragraph too good to check, but I kind of wish they'd checked it anyway:

They have reason for concern: News last year that the biggest named beneficiary in Mrs. Helmsley’s will was Trouble, her Maltese, led to death threats against the dog, which now requires security costing $100,000 a year.

I really don't see how this is possible, unless there is a business more lucrative than supplying ammunition to the Pentagon or starting an Iraqi resistance organization. How hard would it be to just take Trouble to some sort of doggie day care, where he could relax and meet other dogs and begin a new life away from all the old ghosts and outrageous comments? Which reminds me,
MOE: If someone has a hit out on your dog, do the police have any responsibility to keep it alive?
MEGAN: Who would put a hit out on a dog? Like, a for-real hit? Didn't people see A Fish Called Wanda?
MOE: And isn't this whole story sort of a study in how people who have excessive affection for animals — maybe there is something wrong with them?
MEGAN: Anyway, I would think the cops would dismiss both the threat and the person reporting it as cracked.
MOE: And that
MOE: is when you call in the $100,000 ex-KGB pet security service.
MEGAN: I mean, if you have $5-$8 million to spend in, what, like 10 years or less, given that the dogs were a certain age when Leona died, why now?
MEGAN: I mean, why not, Freudian typo.
MEGAN: Anyway, so did you see the harbinger of the economic apocalypse? Starbucks is closing 600 stores.
MOE: Leona Helmsley was once heard saying, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes." And in that vein I think we need to remind readers that Barack Obama, double Ivy Leaguing arugula-chomping card-carrying member of the elitist elite, got a home loan that may have saved him $300 a month. THREE HUNDRED A MONTH. Don't get me wrong, I'd love an extra $300 a month but if they went through some shady unethical business to save that no one can ever accuse them of being too highbrow ever again.
MEGAN: It doesn't even sound like they got it somewhere shady. It looks like they went through a local bank (support your local businesses!) who probably don't see a ton of wealthy customers or super-jumbo loans, showing nearly $500,000 in annual income, a $2 million windfall payment and the potential for book earnings. I'd bend over backwards to get those people as customers, too. Did I tell you back when I was trying to find an interesting job out of grad school, before I decided stupidly to be a lobbyist, I interviewed for a position in private banking? That's banking for super-rich people. It's all about relationship-building. The .375% they maybe lost on the loan discount they gave to get the business (in that world) is more than made up for the volume of business you get from making a wealthy customer happy. I wish I'd gotten that job.
MOE: Yes I know all about private banking. I had a friend whose dad was a client. The guy kept her on a budget but she would call at all hours to get funds. This sort of blew my mind. Starbucks, meanwhile, is a terrible terrible thing. I mean, these stores represent less than 5% of their stores, and apparently 70% of the closures are happening at stores that opened after 2005, so your Starbucks is probably safe, but for the exurban power centers and lifestyle strips that it will effect, the trickle-down (ha!) effects will be intense. Because those guys rely on Starbucks to pull in other tenants! And if they can't get Starbucks they're left with a 60% vacant strip mall!! Enough of those in your zip code and people might have to start moving back to cities.
MOE: Oh in other news, and I thought Pennsylvania state senators were sleazy. And also, how is this even possible. And also, Helmsley originally tried to leave $12 billion to her dog but the judge reduced that to $2 billion and even pitched in a few million for some grandchildren Helmsley had deliberately left out of her will.
MEGAN: You know how you know the Massachusetts guy is a bad politician? Unlike a Congressman, he's not running for re-election.
MOE: Oh god and thank the deities Obama nabbed the critical Streisand endorsement.
MEGAN: Well, that and Michelle's speech last week should help him corral some of the LGBT Hillary supporters that are still upset.
MOE: Yeah he's no Vito Fossella.

Prosecutors alleged in a news release that Marzilli told one woman, "The sex is sweet, the sex is sweet, you want it, and you want to go with me."
He allegedly asked the second woman "Do you have any undergarments under that?"

I'm trying not to mention Italy's dismally low birth rate right here.
MEGAN: Well, Congressman Fossella could've helped out with that, what with his 2 kids with his wife and one with his mistress, he's totally beating the replacement rate!
MEGAN: Also, "the sex is sweet"? Was he fucking high? That shit wouldn't get a boyfriend laid, let alone a stranger on the street.
MOE: Oh check it out Obama beat out McCain as barbecue guest even though I hear McCain, inexplicably given what we know of Obama's iPod, did better on the "who'd you rather carpool to work with." Oddly, there doesn't seem to be a poll yet addressing the question, "Which candidate would you rather have holler at you on the street?" James Marzilli might have just won the Worst Holler
MEGAN: In other insult news, Paul Begala would like to apologize to dirt for calling Republican lobbyists dirtbags:

"I think it was wrong for me to call those fat cat lobbyists dirtbags," said the longtime Clinton confidante. "It is an insult to bags for dirt around the world."

MEGAN: Even the RNC spokeperson laughed at that one.
MEGAN:

"A bag of dirt will have the occasional fecal matter, but generally dirt is good," he said. "I'm a gardener and I grow tomatoes. I love dirt. I should have said oil bag [when talking about GOP donors], or a chemical bag or toxic bag. After all life grows out of dirt."

MOE: I would have suggested he said "bag of coal" but that would be insulting to the barbecues Americans are so eager to invite the Obamas to. Did you check Harry Reid's YouTube performance? It's gone viral. I'm not sure why? But I endorse!
9:15 AM
MEGAN: While I'm watching that, you should read Attackerman's post on our using 70s Chinese torture manuals to train our soldiers on how to torture effectively and watch the video of Christopher Hitchens getting waterboarded, but not for any prurient interest.
MOE: I was going to bring that up with you, first you do it, then this graffiti artist does it and now the Hitch signs up. Does he address whether it's more painful than getting his balls waxed? Actually, can we just do that from now on? Wax the balls of these guys? And I read the story on how we got our interrogation tactics from the Chinese, who also incidentally invented water torture except no wait they didn't they just got wrongly accused of that, and I feel the same way in this sense. Also remember about the INS using Soviet drugs to sedate detainees?
MEGAN: I do remember the sedating detainees thing, that's just fucked up. I wonder if Hitchens saw the video of me waterboarding Jim (lost in the Wonkette server transition when they got sold, RIP waterboarding video) and thought it looked less crappy and scary than it was?
MEGAN: Also, I would think that ball-waxing would be Geneva-compliant, as long as it wasn't women doing it.
MOE: Thomas Frank digs through the Library of Congress on McCain adviser Charlie Black and finds a cynical former officer of some young fascist society that employed nasty smear tactics and liked to take money from poor and give it to fatcat oil bag Republicans.
MEGAN: Black founded the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which, if what Franks says is true, explains why people think PACs are all shitty and dirty and not just money clearing houses for the most part:

NCPAC's calling card was slime. It constantly attacked members of Congress for votes they hadn't cast and positions they hadn't taken – "there have been a few mistakes made in terms of research," was all Mr. Black would admit – and the group's main accomplishment was dodging the campaign-finance laws of the day.

Why does McCain keep this guy around? He's the Pied Piper of bad press.
MOE: And it's not like the McCain campaign is wary of downsizing! Um, do you think that when rich evil people are irrationally devoted to their pets it's a sign that there is something just fundamentally fucked up about pets in general? Because I sort of do.
MEGAN: I think it's something fundamentally wrong with the lives of those rich people.
MOE: She evicted her own widowed daughter-in-law.
MEGAN: Like, they're so alienated from other people and feel like the only unconditional love they get is from their pets (which may be true — God knows Leona wasn't known as a great humanist and treated people like shit, so they probably didn't like her).
MOE: Yeah but do you feel like you know a fair amount of people who, given the money, might become even more pet-obsessed and gradually distance themselves from all humanity? Because I feel like I do. I don't know. Maybe I'm just sort of a hater.
MEGAN: I can't really say, I know, like 6 friends with pets and one of them is you.

• Not to in any way indicate that we have anything less than the utmost horror and offense for torture, but Lt. Col. Diane Beaver who once urged our armed forces to conduct more brutal interrogations at Gitmo, testified today before the Senate Armed Services Committee about her role in torturing various people. Even when the jokes aren't appropriate, we still have to make them. [Washington Independent]
• Really, it was the fault of this video, which you should not listen to at your office without earphones, that explores in great depth why the news media didn't cover the "John McCain called his wife a cunt" story. [Erica Saves the Day, Glamocracy]
• Also, studies show you're drinking more than you think you're drinking, so tip your bartender well! [LA Times]
• Oh, what you wanted real news? Fine. Check in with me after the jump.

• John McCain and George W Bush have more in common than just their Iraq, tax and environmental policies. They also both got ahead in life because they had powerful daddies. [NY Times, HuffPo]
• Obama says that Osama bin Laden is free because of the Republicans' focus on Iraq. This will likely be really unpopular among people that still believe that Saddam had WMDs and the Iraq War was necessary to stop him from nuking us.[HuffPo]
• Kansas anti-abortion protesters have decided that if they can't win hearts, minds or good legal cases, they'll just use a century-old law to harass an abortion provider. [NY Times]
• Their brothers- and sisters-in-ideological-fundie-arms are busy trying to get people not to enforce other laws though. Mostly the ones that require that California marry gay people. Assholes. [iReport]
• But there is some good stuff in the world and this country today, like the International Violence Against Women Act that Betty Makoni came here from Zimbabwe to lobby for. See? Not all lobbying is bad, people. [Washington Post]

MOE: Ummmmm is it just me or is today, like, all about POLICY??
MEGAN: It does seem like my jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none brain when it comes to policy issues might come in handy this morning! Where do you want to start?

MOE: Maybe with the incredibly astute words of McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin:

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, chief economic aide to Republican candidate Sen. John McCain, dismissed the Obama strategy as "classic industrial policy which shows a lack of faith in private markets."

MEGAN: Obama's got this part right though: "How much you pay in taxes as a corporation a lot of times is going to depend on how good your lobbyist is."
MOE: I mean, what have the private markets done to instill faith in you lately? Are we supposed to be like Job with these things?
MOE: right.
MOE: This isn't something I would mind seeing: "Americans with incomes above $2.8 million would see their after-tax income decrease by 11.5%."
MEGAN: Hardly anyone pays the actual income tax rate because of loopholes. If I heard my now former boss say it once, I heard it 15 times, if you eliminate deductions and credits, you could reduce the corporate rate to, like, 25% without losing revenue. You could lower personal rates even further and eliminate taxes for a percentage of the population. It's an incredibly inefficient system.

MEGAN: I did an analysis of the candidates' tax plans on young single women. Obama's is better.
MOE: Did you see this handy graf on the rebirth of the plutocracy? Just before the Great Depression the top .01% of households averaged 892 times the household income of the households in the bottom 90%, and that number of course plummeted and only really began steadily rising in 1980 to the point that it's now 976. These are imperfect numbers, of course — how big is the top .01%? How about the top .1%? Etc. etc. But it's a nice visual aid!

MOE: The income required to make the Top 400 list of earners has tripled since 1992, AFTER ADJUSTING FOR INFLATION.

MEGAN: I mean, the question is, from a policy perspective, is whether that's truly undesirable and what can be honestly done about it. Given the nature of the international financial sector and personal and currency mobility, would heavy taxation be effective? Can we limit income? Can you create or force businesses to create better oversight and board systems to protect shareholder interests, say, with a mandate that multimillion dollar compensation packages that aren't effectively tied to long-term performance are considered not in shareholders' best interests? I don't think either of the candidates has really talked about serious policies aimed at resolving income inequality because it's such a squishy issue to get your arms around let alone resolve from a policy perspective.
MOE: A few things: 1. Well yeah I think income inequality is truly undesirable from a policy perspective. 2. And the only way to deal is tax the everliving shit out of capital gains and use that money to beef up the SEC and education. Because the people who set executive compensation, the people who "look out for the interests of shareholders," the people who monitor the people allegedly looking out for those interests, the people who kick out executives for underperformance and are charged with luring in a new guy to "clean house" — all those people are part of this racket. And one, their version of "long term" is at most five years. And two, they set the yardsticks, the standards. They're all friends and acquaintances and they all know exactly how much everyone gets paid and they've pushed the baseline up up up.
MEGAN: What is "taxing the shit" out of capital gains? Back up to 25%? Higher? Won't they just try to pull some work around if that happens, the way private equity funds are just an elaborate way around taxation?
MOE: Well every policy creates loopholes, and certainly you'd probably see some money shift to less taxable assets, not that we didn't see that already with the real estate bubble, but none of the hundreds of executives indicted on backdating their stock options worked for a private company, you know? I mean, eventually the big payoff in private equity tends to come from the public markets, right? Or an acquisition? The thing that people need to get through their thick fucking heads is that yeah, there's always a greater and greatest fool losing out here, and we've missed out on a lot of the fundamental zero-sumness of corporate earnings growth because our standards of living are being propped up by artificially low standards in China, which China maintains as part of its INDUSTRIAL POLICY.

MEGAN: Hypothetically speaking, then, not that this is in my personal best interest as a homeowner, one of the ways to keep people from transferring assets into real estate to reap tax benefits would be to reduce the tax preference for home ownership and for real estate more generally.
MOE: Right. Although I don't know if you'd do that in the middle of a housing crisis?
MEGAN: Which, by the way, would probably have helped slow the bubble, and would slow the growth in home prices because creating a tax preference creates a market for people seeking to exploit it and it pretty quickly gets built into the price
MOE: Well yes.
MEGAN: Well, why wouldn't you? I don't know that it could hurt anymore now. If you wanted to be fair you could grandfather it or give some sort of one-time rebate payment or something and call it a fucking day.

MEGAN: The mortgage interest deduction and state and local tax deduction (which includes property taxes) are two of the largest deductions in the tax system, that are taken advantage of almost exclusively by people earning above the median income. They're also, along with having kids, the main reason people in the so-called "middle class" end up paying the Alternative Minimum Tax, though "middle class" is kind of a stretch for someone making $100, $120K/year when median income is $45K, but I'll accept that definition. Obama's willing to go up to $250K.
MOE: I wonder if there is like, a rich folks CPI that tracks the rising costs of… luxury real estate, private education, corian countertops, that sort of thing.

MEGAN: Not, by the way, that this bears any relationship to the conversation at hand, but coffee may be helping us live longer. I'm hoping alcohol consumption offsets that.
MOE: Okay so I'm creeping through his interview and, you know, the Journal basically says "well Clinton said a lot of this stuff but then he became obsessed with the deficit and it's not like THAT'S not a problem right now" and Obama says like "well now we have energy problems too so there's that." Like there's this meme out there that alternative energy is going to become this huge new sector of the economy but like who is going to lead that?

MOE: Ha I like how it ends

WSJ: A lot of folks would say cutting corporate tax rates are equivalent growth.
Sen. Obama: I don't want a distorting effect of our tax code on corporate decision making. But that's different from just saying you know, let's run up the deficit another couple of trillion dollars …

MEGAN: And after all those bonuses, too!
MOE: Yeah they're only on track to get $19 billion this Xmas sad sad world. But I don't know, can we really make the argument that it would be societally optimal for that money to …maybe find other uses for itself?
MEGAN: Ooch, Obama is co-opting the Republican small government ethos, but with a delish Democratic twist — making it, you know, actually effective.

I think the danger is always to equate size of government with effectiveness, and I don't. It's not clear to me that we want a larger government, but we certainly want a government that is setting more intelligent priorities and using taxpayer dollars more wisely and structuring tax policies that are conducive to long-term economic growth. As I mentioned during the speech, there may be programs that no longer work. There's certainly all kinds of previsions in our tax code that are antiquated and are not spurring economic growth. We've got offices like the patent office that are outdated to take advantage of new discoveries here in the United States.

Republicans have gotten so focused at starving the beast or cutting off the snake's head that they've forgotten they can actually do proactive things to reduce gov't. Or, in the case of this administration, they haven't wanted to reduce its size.

MOE: Thomas Frank doesn't have a new column out yet I guess that happens tomorrow but he changed the name to "The Tilting Yard." Weird.
MEGAN: Is it, like, a Cervantes reference? Is he Don Quixote?

MOE: Well he had the same column name, "Fighting Words" as Hitchens, whose last column on Hillary and sexism is the most Hitchens thing Hitchens has ever written, right down to the Juanita Broaddrick ref:

Posterity may well remember the Hillary Clinton campaign as the nearest that a member of the female gender had thus far gotten to the nomination of a major political party. But the episode will be recalled for many other salient features as well. The first time that the wife of an ex-president had leveraged her first-lady status into a senatorial seat and then a bid for the presidency. The first time that the candidate's spouse (and campaigner in chief) was a person who had been disbarred for perjury and impeached for—among other things—obstruction of justice.
MOE: The first time since the 1960s that a Democrat seeking the nomination had implicitly relied on a "Southern strategy" of appealing to the rancor of the "white working class." The first time since the lachrymose Ed Muskie that a candidate's eyes had welled up with tears in New Hampshire. The first time that a woman candidate was married to a man who had been believably accused of rape and sexual harassment (see my book No One Left To Lie To). The first time that a candidate had said of her half-African-American rival that he was not a member of the Muslim faith "as far as I know." The first time that the loser in the delegate count had failed to congratulate or even acknowledge the winner on the night of his historic victory.

MEGAN: I tried to write something about it, but it's so hard to respond to stupid sometimes.

MEGAN: This is, after all, the same dude that ejaculates at the thought of Bill Clinton. Granted, it's at his humiliation, but I don't think that makes him any less of a gay, S&M fetishist with a hair trigger. I feel sorry for his wife.
MOE: So maybe Tilting Yard was a dig at Hitchens who I bet 1. gets it and 2. has had on more than one occasion, like, epically tilted into something mid-rant at a party or something, but that is just my guess.
MEGAN: Well, if by "tilted" you mean "stuck his small British peen into the vagina of a 19 year old with hero worship in her eyes," then, yes, he's done that at parties.
MOE: So guess what, I totally missed talking about torture again, or the Army official who claims he was fired for refusing to approve a billion dollars in shady fees to KBR, or like, drilling in the wildlife refuge or whatev. Do you have anything to say about this shit?
MEGAN: Oh, McCain doesn't want to drill in ANWR, he wants to drill along the CA/FL coasts, something that Bush and Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist and Arnie and the Republicans from all those states have opposed because it will ruin the views of Republican voters who hate high gas prices and environmentalism but love them their views.

MEGAN: Also, the KBR thing is just confirming what everyone already knew, which is that pressure was applied at some point. I am amazed that no one caught the part where the Administration recently signed a 10-year contract with KBR to provide services to our troops in Iraq. That's, you know, until 2018.
MEGAN: We also didn't talk about the floods will raise food prices or the Chinese expat newspaper article about Obama's skin color, but shit happens.

MEGAN: Hey, there, how is London-Town.

MOE: Hey I just wrote something about being here. It is dumb. Mostly it has that European problem where nothing is open when you want it to be open because you have insomnia or your period or whatever
MOE: In my case, both.
MOE: They are really really really into the environment here.
MEGAN: Does that mean no tampons or something?
MEGAN: Also, yes, I hate stupid laws in Europe where everything closes down and nothing is open on Sundays and crap.

MOE: No I mean, apparently there are organic tampons or whatever. No what it means is just that it seems to be all you read about, or like, I'm at this pub, and it's a stupid pub, like it seems very chain-y and airport-y, like the British version of ... what's a chain pub? Elephant & Castle or something. Only, you know, really stunningly horrible food, like you hear about. Anyway apparently the fish and chips are made with SUSTAINABLE COD. Like, good grief. And yeah I'm sure that makes sense. And I hate those laws too. I like the laws that say you can't have as many sales as you can in America, because I think price differentiation run amok is a big problem there, but there should be a law here that SOMETHING in every neighborhood should be open 24 hours, just to keep transplanted Americans sane.
MOE: Did you ever see that abortion movie? 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days?
MEGAN: No, I'm bad about seeing movies. I go through spurts where I see a bunch and then I go without for a really long time. It was around in my chaste period, so to speak. Also, I hate chain pubs and try not to go to chain restaurants, but, um, the homemade potato chips at Elephant and Castle have called to me, I won't deny.
MOE: It's about Romania and it's supposedly very depressing, even though I didn't really find it that depressing, except to the extent that the protagonist's boyfriend shared that very common boyfriend problem where he is totally clueless and that was depressing, but really the most depressing part was just how DARK EVERYTHING WAS and how night is dark and eerie in Europe in a lot of places.
MEGAN: I think that's more of a film meme than a reality. I never found Germany particularly eerie at night.
MOE: Yeah I'm trying to think of the name of the Irish pub chain in Philly at 15th and Locust or thereabouts. I can't believe I can't remember the name of this place. God I shouldn't have had white wine. And I found Vienna dark. Not eerie, just lifeless.
MOE: And then there's all those places with their communism etc. etc.

MEGAN: I believe you are thinking of Fado. There's one in DC, too, by the Verizon Center.
MOE: I'm intrigued by Frank Rich's use of an emoticon in his headline. Ah yes! Fado. God the food there is some fucking masterful cuisine compared to the meal I just had.
MEGAN: Oh, Frank Rich, angry women do not use emoticons.

MOE: ok so…what I was going to say before my fucking Wi-fi which I paid ten pounds for crapped out is that I guess we should discuss McCain's War College thesis.
MOE: Also: Condi chastising Israelis for all their ugly settlements, which is the topic of a new and good-sounding book called Palestinean Walks …and speaking of which a Palestinian birthday party was ruined by some Israeli soldiers recently and so there's that.

MEGAN: Ah, ok, well, so, John McCain's thesis. I read the whole thing. It's kind of interesting on its face, but the fact that he doesn't acknowledge in it having been one of the tortured men about which he's talking makes its central conceit a bit, um, torturous.
MOE: HA. You read the whole thesis? Seriously?
MEGAN: Yes. I, um, didn't have much to do yesterday.
MEGAN: It was interesting, it's basically trying to get at a manner for training troops to survive being POWs. The New York Times piece you linked to points out some factual inaccuracies, the most egregious of which is that McCain thinks that the men that "broke" the easiest were the ones that joined the war after the country turned against it but he's not correct on his timing.
MOE: Also, oh god, there's Obama's Fathers Day speech on absentee dads, and one noted absentee dad being Tim Russert, who like I told you yesterday reminds me of my own dad, ABSENT the ridiculous tie which is his signature. I thought Pareene's obit was sweet, but moving back to my dad he actually attended the War College, and moving back to the War College that is where John McCain wrote this thing
9:25 AM
MEGAN: Oh, God, Russert, dude, on MTP yesterday, Carville and Matalin and Brokaw were crying, and then his producer started and they had to run the tribute video two minutes early because no one could hold it together any longer.
MOE: Oh man, that is so fucking sad. Is there a clip?
MEGAN: Here's the end, as he struggled to keep it really together, but he literally broke down a little earlier.
9:30 AM
MOE: Oh god I can't watch that. I'm already dehydrated. Jesus.
MEGAN: The whole thing was really, really sad. Anyway, so, John McCain's thesis. Less sad than that.
MOE: Yeah I'm amusing myself now with stop sitting in the house watching SportsCenter and “Don’t get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation." Yeah, don't pat yourself on the back till your super sweet 16.
MEGAN: I mean, I think McCain has an interesting point about the need for better training, I think it's absolutely prescient when it comes to the idea that there were around 550 POWs and that the public's outcry about that small number of people allowed the North Vietnamese to hijack peace negotiations and the like.
MOE: Yeah, that was a very good point I hadn't considered as much, because I never even really knew the number. What was the breakdown between resisters and "collaborators"?
MEGAN: Many more resisters than collaborators.
9:40 AM
MEGAN: But my most favorite part, buried in the text, is this:

Many ex-POWs have stated that due to the length and divisiveness of the Vietnam conflict, if the policy of the North Vietnamese towards the captured Americans had been of strict adherence to the Geneva Convention the North Vietnamese might have returned a group of men who would have been grateful and sympathetic to their problems in that part of the world. Instead, a dedicated group of anti-communists have emerged from that ordeal.

But maybe I'm just influenced by the whole Gitmo ruling last week.
MEGAN: I guess, however, that the intervening years have changed John's mind.

"These are people who are not citizens; they do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have," McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said at a town hall meeting in Pemberton, New Jersey, yesterday. "There are some bad people down there."

MOE: Yeah that's what I'm reading now. So he doesn't think they should be tortured, because he was tortured, but the Gitmo ruling was "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country" because he…doesn't love democracy so much he wants to extend its rights to terror suspects…? What blows my mind about this shit is that the guys in Guantanamo are such a collection of clueless moderate bystandery wrong-place-wrong-time types. And which commenter pointed out OBL's driver's sixth grade education, not to bring it back to Obama's speech… anyway… it's just like, has he looked at the charges against these guys? I mean, McCain is a senator, he probably has access to the ACTUAL evidence against these guys.
MOE: He like knows how shit it is.
MOE: Oh also in the wake of massive protests the Saudis have finally agreed to produce more oil but they're telling Europe to lower their gas taxes. Which I guess have something to do with the $40 cab ride I took back to my hotel yesterday? Anyway, not bitter here. But anyway economists think if it weren't for speculators and the natural inclination of markets to hyperbolize these things oil would be $80 to $100 a barrel but what can you do.
MEGAN: Or he doesn't care because he's running for President and the far right hates the ruling so why not compromise his supposed principles yet again and say what he's supposed to say?
MEGAN: I love how the Saudis are all like, lower your taxes but you know they ain't lowering the royalties they get (aka, taxes) from foreign oil companies. Mmmm, hypocrisy smells soooo carbon-y.
MOE: Issue 1. But why? The only way he can win is by appealing to moderates who probably believe on some level this terror war thing was, as Frank Fukuyama pointed out, a bad idea, right? Or do feminists want Supreme Court Justices to the right of John Roberts? (Who btw did not take part in the case I guess?) (anyway) I have a headache and I need to post this.

• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed thinks the courtroom artist drew his nose too wide. He lost a bunch of weight on the Guantanamo diet and totally turns out to be one of those secretly vain terror masterminds. [USA Today]
• This will shock you: Bob Dylan is voting for Barack Obama. Okay, I was kidding about the shocked part. [Times]
• There was this whole movement afoot to strongarm Barry into picking Hillary over some of his other bros but I think Hillary took a step back and said, "You know, this is bullshit, I don't care anymore, if he wants me he wants me," and although the hardest part about doing that is always the realization that he's probably gonna be all "It ain't me babe," I'm glad she did that. [NY Times]
• You just have to accept that in the Catholic Church shit takes awhile, and that if a priest is accused of pedophilia it might take a few years or even decades to remove him. Now, if he mocks Hillary Clinton and it ends up on YouTube, on the other hand, now that is when you gotta sever all ties right away. [Chicago Tribune] [The Root]
• Well this is a new one: alcohol cutting your risk of arthritis. I pretty much always thought gout was arthritis, and that you get that from wine, so this is pretty awesome news, not that I would even notice I had arthritis what with the shakes and whatnot. [BBC]

• What drives the economy and technological innovation and stuff? In some countries it's known "industrial policy." But in this country since the Cold War it's pretty much been porn, so I don't know what this guy is talking about. [Miller-McCune]
• The recession has driven Saks shoppers to Nordstrom, American Eagle shoppers to Aeropostale and everyone else to BJ's and Costco. [WSJ]
• Black people think Obama needs to remember the Sisterhood. This is not a particularly revolutionary essay but I'm linking to it because I read through it the whole way. [The Root]
• The other day I got an IM from my friend. "Could Lehman seriously become the next Bear Stearns just based on fear that it's the next Bear Stearns?" she asked. "Yup," I replied, and told the fear and greed aphorism. But apparently $60 billion worth of "tough to value" securities is another big reason. [Economist]
• Anyway, the big problem is there's a lot of greed, and not enough fear. Let me explain: we are the Fed, and bankers are dudes. We control the population supply, which seems like a pretty powerful position, but they have more time on their hands and thus much more elaborate ways of fucking with us to the point where we're basically their bitch. Anyway, this is called "moral hazard", which is almost as good a name for an okay first novel as The Undatable. [Economist] [WSJ]
• I'm thinking of changing the name of this feature, to something like "Narrow Thoughts" or "Profundities" or something. Deep thoughts, anyone?
• There is probably something totally awesome and life-affirming about being able to scale skyscrapers but, like…nah, I can't really see the point. [NYT]
• Oh yeah and you fucking dykes have sent me some pretty little sums to help get those feminists out of Basra! Why did I never wait tables on bitches like you? That's right, because we were all waiting tables together.

• Does Anna Wintour love Amy Winehouse even more than Karl Lagerfeld does? Word on the street is that the singer who wouldn't go to rehab only to go to rehab has been offered $1 million to play at the Wintour-hosted Costume Institute Gala. But a rep says that can't be true since the Costume Institute Gala is supposed to be, you know, a benefit. For the children probably! [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Some outfit called the New Enthusiasm is spoofing Marc Jacobs and Juergen Teller, the guy who shoots all those ads of his, with John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg, and now everyone is wondering what could possibly be the motive behind such a peculiar stunt. We have no earthly idea! That is why we present you with this hyperlink, so you can further ponder what it all means. [Sassybella]
  
• Anya Hindmarch's London flagship was burgled last night, the second robbery the store has experienced in the past year. Can you think of a handbag designer whose inventory you would covet less than Anya's? Because I'm having trouble. [Vogue UK]
  
• Oh god, you know, just when this industry's political statements could not get any more absurd: Agent Provacateur's "Fair Trial My Arse" underwear. [Sassybella]
  
• Also, the rumors aren't true: Katie Homes is not designing for Armani. [E!]

• Model Lauren Bush's most trauma-ramatic moment? "[O]ne Passover when we were on Coney Island, New York, where lots of conservative Jews live. It was a swimwear shoot, but luckily the theme was Fifties so nothing was too scandalous. Anyway, a crowd of Hasidic teenagers surrounded the camera. I was so embarrassed, I felt like I was corrupting them on a religious holiday." [Times of London]
• Nordstrom is going green. And if you thought this wouldn't somehow involve a "collaboration" with a fancy designer you'd never heard of to design a reusable (and collectible!) shopping tote, well you would be wrong. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Alexander McQueen, hellbent on world domination, is showing not only in Paris, but in a mini-show in New York next week. [Vogue UK]
• Designer Adam Lippes is turning his Meatpacking District NYC store into an outpost for the ASPCA April 4-6, when the only thing you'll be able to do in the store is adopt a pooch who needs a good home. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Lululemon, the yogawear line that got into all that trouble when they said their garments were made of seaweed and, then, er, they weren't, is now issuing a line of running clothes which they claim contain sensors built into the garment that serve as a heart rate monitor. [WWD, 3rd item]
• Banana Republic is doing a limited edition eco-friendly collection of clothes in honor of Earth Day, on sale during the month of April. Um, what about the 11 other months in a year? [WWD, 1st item]
• And Club Monaco is issuing its first-ever swimwear collection, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Earth Day. [WWD, 2nd item]
• Philip Lim: Doing a trench coat for Coach. Yawn. [WWD, 2nd item]
• Designer Jasper Conran is moving on up: The Queen has tapped him to become an Officer of the British Empire. [Vogue UK]
• Expensive shit alert: A diamond-bedecked faucet! [Chic Report]
• And, um, Gmail: The Soap? [Chic Report]

• Gisele appears on the cover of the April Vogue with...Lebron James. This is may seem like an historic event on par with, say, a black president, but that would belie how far we've come as a nation, revealed by the dead-first comment reacting to the news on our brother blog Deadspin: "That cover would have been much more fantastic if he had been dressed a la Andre french vogue. Oh Anna, Anna, Anna." Our take: Lebron probably exercises more influence over footwear and apparel sales than Anna Wintour and Gisele and Karl Lagerfeld combined. If Vogue really wanted to think outside the (heh) box, they'd make over Lebron's mom. [Deadspin]
  
• Christian Siriano update: found backers for his clothing line, had a fit meeting with Victoria Beckham yesterday, taping Leno tonight, and is slated for an Ugly Betty cameo. Surely nothing like this could end in anticlimax and obscurity? [WWD, 2nd item]
  
• Karl Lagerfeld on the just-opened Chanel Mobile Art pavillion: "It's a building, but also an object at the same time. It's like a sculpture you can walk in." [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• Reese Witherspoon is the face of the new U by Ungaro fragrance, being licensed by Avon. Do you care? You so care, don't you. [WWD, sub req'd]

• Whitney is such a follower! Ms. Port, of The Hills fame, is starting her own clothing line, Eve & A, which will show party and cocktail wear. Her daddy is producing it, natch. Who's her daddy? You know, some rich guy. Why burden yourself with the data? [WWD, sub req'd]
• Liz Claiborne is still tanking despite the best efforts (and we can only imagine laserlike focus!) of Tim Gunn. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Pacific Sunwear is also suffering. [WSJ]
• Designer Alice Temperley is preg! [Vogue UK]
• Fashion illustrator (and husband of designer Isabel) Ruben Toledo on how he started his career: "All I knew is that I wanted to paint and draw and do art and be with Isabel—she is my leading inspiration and muse. And I knew that fashion was absurd." But hey, so's the universe, right? [Fashion Week Daily]
• I wanna Paul Smith ping-pong table. [Chic Report]
• And a 10,000-square foot billboard of Djimon Hounsou in his skivvies, oh yes. [Chic Report]
• Model May Anderson is the latest not-designer to play at design: She's started a denim line called Chicks with Guns. [FabSugar]
• How to rip hair off your body using common kitchen ingredients! [BellaSugar]
• Seeing a woman say "May my new curls make her feel choked with jealousy" and "Make him dump her tonight and come home with me" does not make me want to buy hair products. [Sassybella]
• Indian designer Prashant Verma based his entire fall collection on James Dean movies. [Yahoo]
• Yeah, we're skeptical that a pair of bike shorts has the power to ensure faster muscle recovery. [Business Week]

MOE: PATTI SOLIS DOYLE. I wish I knew more about her other than she looks like Rachel Ray and according to Drudge is Latina. I guess he's saying she's outlived her usefulness since all Latins were already too racist to vote for the black? I know I read once in More magazine I think about the travails of being Patti Solis Doyle and ... how it's tough to be a working mom etc. etc. Other than that I'm drawing a blank. Always more distracted by the sight of Huma Abedin. What do you have?
MEGAN: I got nothin'. I guess I had sort of assumed that, given the incestuous nature of politics in DC, that she was related to Congresswoman Hilda Solis, but wikipedia tells me I'm wrong. She's actually from Chicago AND worked for Mayor Daley's campaign... and Michelle Obama used to work for Mayor Daley. And her strategy has definitely been kind of hit-or-miss this campaign. But, stupid to fire her 2 days before tomorrow's primaries, I think. Your campaign manager should never be the story.
MOE: Oh, my brother came up with an interesting theory he just emailed to me. It just started to make sense now. He thinks Romney helped Obama by "making McCain the sure-thing for Republicans." Now, independents who would have gone to the Republican primaries to vote for McCain are instead going to the Democratic primaries to vote for Obama. He said this is what is happening with his friend's dads — all Virginia guys.
It's the faith of my fathers/dreams from my father thing. I'm telling you, this campaign will turn out to be about Manhood yet!
Oh yeah and I guess we should also discuss whether it was, like, "expected" that Obama would win all those states by those insane margins? And was Nebraska the biggest surprise? I always thought of Nebraska as being pretty much like Oklahoma.
MEGAN: Well, but Nebraska and Maine were both closed primaries/caucuses, as is Maryland's and DC. It might make a difference in VA tomorrow, though.
Nebraska's a weird state anyway. It has a unicameral nonpartisan legislature.
MOE: Who's favored in Maryland? I imagine that a huge percentage of MD Dems have worked w. the Clintons but that's not necessarily an advantage for their campaign.
MEGAN: As for Washington state, a friend from Seattle told me this weekend that Barack's events attracted at least 3 times the people's as Hillary's events last week.
The last 3 polls in Maryland show Obama leading by an average of 21 points.
According to The Sun, it's because of the strength of black voters in the state, but Governor Martin O'Malley (whose doesn't think superdelegate vote is currently committed to the Hills) doesn't think it's an issue for the Democratic party to put forward a candidate that a majority of African-American voters in his state (and many others) didn't support because they'll still vote Democratic in November.
MOE: Okay so I actually just read one of those Solis Doyle stories. They are blaming it on the cash crunch; Patti didn't tell Hillary she was running out of cash etc. etc. ... sounds like some sort of spin. But on the other hand, who was letting them ride around in private jets if they were burning through dough that way? Have you seen any stories on, you know, places the Clinton campaign might have saved $$$ ?? In other news she apparently clashed with Bill. I dunno, I realize this strategy worked for McCain, but that was last summer...
And dude?! Mark Penn got FOUR MILLION DOLLARS??!
MEGAN: Oooh, I guess we know who walked Patti out, eh?
All those campaign consultants are bigger blood-suckers than lobbyists, imho
MOE: Srsly! And I mean, honestly, for what? So that fucking Terry McAuliffe can go on teevee and say "Are you suggesting we DISENFRANCHISE THE VOTERS OF FLORIDA Keith? Surely you don't suggest we DISENFRANCHISE THOSE VOTERS!!!"
MEGAN: Penn is getting paid twice as much as Axelrod is getting paid by Obama, who's raking in way more cash right now.
But she did jump on the flat fees for media consultants bandwagon ahead of Obama, which was probably a money saver, since those people bilked Kerry for $9 million last time. They get paid a fee per ad, btw, for how many ads air. They're the ones I blame.
MOE: It's funny. I vaguely remember the Cinton administration seeming like an old diesel powered station wagon, or like Pig Pen, w. like, a big cloud of internal strife and dissent wherever it went, in stark contrast to Bush and his sorta hard shiny coat of loyalty and mind control, where the only option for a rank-breaker would be to go unload to Ron Suskind.
Anyway HAPPY MEDIUM. THERE'S GOTTA BE A HAPPY MEDIUM RIGHT?
MEGAN: There are no mediums in politics!
Happy or otherwise.
They pay shitty, whether it's for a campaign or in the government, so they only attract the TRULY COMMITTED who aren't really the types of people who swim happily in the grey areas.
MOE: It also seems like maybe Patti failed to wrest an endorsement out of John Edwards and that did it?
MEGAN: If Hillary herself couldn't do it, how was Patti going to?
MOE: She has such a nice face! She seems so breezy and approachable! Maybe they got along!
But not well enough. When is Edwards supposed to come out + endorse somebody?
He is "said to be torn."
MEGAN: I think having not yet done so, he's not really going to until he absolutely has to. Why would he? He probs isn't a superdelegate, so it's his only real vote.
MOE: Okay and just in case you forgot about the Bush administration still like running things and all, six lucky Guantanamo detainees are finally going to get their day in "court." The Pentagon seeks to kill them all. But what of the rest of the guys in Guantanamo? That's for the next administration to deal with!
And Mike Huckabee...persists.
MEGAN: Because The Jesus will help him prevail against that McCain guy.

• Poor Fergie reportedly barfed all over herself while at the Minnesota State Fair. Maybe it was all the fried food on a stick? [Dlisted]
  
• Speaking of Minnesota: Republican Senator Larry Craig got busted by the police for "lewd behavior" in the gentleman's room of a Minnesota airport. Hasn't the Land Of 10,000 Lakes been through enough?! [Crooks and Liars]
  
• Michael Vick is going to jail and rightly so. But lets also remember that we live in a country where the man behind the Katrina debacle, Michael Chertoff, may be getting a promotion. [BBC]
  
• President Bush says that poor little Alberto Gonzalez endured "unfair treatment" during his tenure as Attorney General. [CNN]

• Speaking of Bush, French president Nicolas Sarkozy is starting to sound eerily like him: He's gunning for Iran. Sigh. [NYT]
  
• The U.N., Christy Turlington, and Russell Simmons are banding together to promote some sorta World Peace Through Yoga Day. It's like Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the other. And by that we mean, we've never seen any of those U.N. dudes successfully execute scorpion pose. [ABC News]
  
• "You could feel her bones sticking through. She's on the cusp - she looks good now but if she takes it any further, she's going to start to look ill. She's incredibly compulsive. The Spice Girls' reunion is a huge deal for her and she wants to look her very best for her moment back in the limelight." Alas, this quote isn't about Victoria Beckham, but Geri "Ginger Spice" Halliwell. Note to Geri: Starvation is not what "Girl Power" is all about. [Malaysia Sun]
  
• Yay for gender equality? Now it's not just women who have to worry about the aftermath of hormone replacement therapy: Men who take testosterone supplements could suffer major kidney damage. [CNN]