• Raymond Hunter Geisel (no relation to the awesomest Geisel ever) was arrested in Florida today for threatening to assassinate Barack Obama. One nutjob down, too many to go. [Politico]
• A President is going to get impeached! No, not ours. Pakistan's own Uncle Pervy. [HuffPo]
• Salim Hamdan, convicted earlier this week of driving for Osama bin Laden, was sentenced today to 66 months in prison. He's already been at Gitmo for 61 months, which means he should be released in 5 but this is the Bush Administration until January 20th. [Washington Post]

• Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, he of the racy and lied-about text messages, was set to jail today for violating the conditions of his bond. The judge said, "If it was not Kwame Kilpatrick sitting in that seat — if it was John Six-Pack sitting in the seat — what would I do? And the answer is simple." Thought Kilpatrick, as he is likely wont to do, "But I am Kwame Kilpatrick!" And then off to the hoosegow he was led. [NY Times]
• In the mean time, the Democratic party's statement of principle on the Iraq War has been leaked. The war was bad, troops will be redeployed, we need a "diplomatic surge" and there's going to be (one hopes) an increasingly small number of troops there for a while yet so that the Dems can't be accused of cutting and running though they still will be. [Washington Independent]
• Margaret Dupes and her (recently fired) high school newspaper adviser are pissed that the high school's principal spiked her piece decrying abstinence-only education. Said principal told the adviser that he was uncomfortable with the content, but his lawyer's telling the press that it was because he was convinced it must've been written by an adult. Great faith in your students, sir! [UPI]

MOE: Hi, what's going on. I'm tired. Your boy Mark Penn and Karen Huges sure look like the match made in Hell, no?
MEGAN: What is it they say about when lions and lambs lay down together? I'm not sure whether the rapture has already happened and I just didn't notice what with living in D.C. and all and no one going missing, or if the apocalypse is starting, or if D.C. is really just purgatory.
MEGAN: Also, the Clinton camp: pissed and somehow surprised that Obama's big donors haven't given them more money to pay off the debts they accumulated after winning became a mathematical impossibility. Also pissed that Obama won't give them his small donor email list to spam with requests. Like, for real. If you have him $5, she wants your email address to be able to ask for for $100.
MOE: Better idea: Roger Ailes! Sean Hannity! Get Bill Kristol to write about in his column! And surely Rush can afford to pitch in what with the four hundred million dollars and everything. He's got some listeners too I have heard.

MEGAN: I mean, it only seems fair. His minions supposedly help keep her in the race, he wouldn't want the small business people (who probs vote Republican anyway, or will now that the Dems are dicking them around) to not be able to feed their families!
MOE: Hey, this guy looks like he's got some pull with the plutocracy, maybe hit him up too. Don't click if you don't want to stab yourself. I actually might write a letter to the WSJ on the breathtaking inanity of this argument.
MEGAN: Did you know I used to work for the nonpartisan Tax Foundation?
MEGAN: I doubt Scott crunched those numbers, but hey Gerald! Hope your wedding was beautiful!
MEGAN: Also, don't know if you missed this yesterday, but Obama's Social Security funding plan is probably a good part of what's got their knickers in a twist.
MEGAN: So, like, you (and your employer) pay Social Security on the first $102,000 of your income
MOE: Hahahaha what he says, it's soooo nuts! It's like an argument you'd find in a time capsule from 1978 you'd look at and go, "Well, I suppose back then it sounded like he had a point, but the thing they didn't quite realize then is that when rich people pay fewer taxes they don't really generate economic growth outside themselves, and maybe the Caymans and a bit of Shenzhen."
MEGAN: And everything after that is SocSec tax free. Obama thinks that between the cap (adjusted yearly for inflation) and $250,000 (probably not adjusting for inflation, though that's not clear), you wouldn't pay more. After that, if you made more than $250,000, you would resume paying Social Security taxes of 2-4% on those earnings — and so would your employer, creating a small disincentive for paying you more.
MOE: Tom Frank's tilting yard is up your alley, on the corporate push to actually draft some legislation for once, so Comrade Obama can't immediately draft a 5 Year Plan.
MEGAN: Well, I would disagree slightly with the assertion that all the Republican Congress members are retiring just to cash in as lobbyists (they'll have to wait 2 years, except for Trent Lott who only has to wait out this year because of when he retired). I actually think it's because they're a bunch of whiny little idea- and idealless babies who are taking what remains of their balls and going home because they don't like playing if they're not on the winning team.
MEGAN: Other than that, that's an excellent analysis.
MEGAN: So did you want to talk anything about James Baker and Warren Christopher saying there needs to be a new War Powers Resolution, not that the one we have has ever been invoked?
MEGAN: Or would you prefer to fuck any further serious discussion and skip straight to the Formula One guy's Nazi sadomasochistic sex scandal? Because, I can't lie, I read one of those articles more thoroughly than the other.
MEGAN:

In arguing that The News of the World was guilty of a “gross and indefensible intrusion,” he has spoken candidly of his passion for sadomasochism, which he has told the court has lasted for 45 years.

MOE: Please tell me more about the F1 guy. I never could quite follow that one and the Jalopnik guys seemed to be all over it. Also, what is even up with sadomasochism? I'm so ignorant. And innocent! Whatever it is sounds better than Ashley Alexandra Dupre's reality show .
MEGAN: Dude, for REAL, I do not understand reality TV.
MOE: I love the TNR homepage link to book review: Have Freakonomicists Actually Revolutionized The Way We Think About Happiness? Or just the Hackness To Which We Will Stoop In Our Headlines?
MEGAN: Ok, so, like Max Mosley is an important guy in Britain and his parents were, like, British gentry but also really into Hitler back when Hitler was still alive and stuff. And then a Brit tabloid got video of him participating in a really, really long S&M session with 5 women that played on prison fantasies but apparently also had some Nazi overtones (the word Aryan was used!) and now he's suing them for invasion of privacy and in the trial everyone is like, I like pain! With sex. The end.
MOE: Neither do I, for the record. I just don't get it. Interestingly, even Tracie, the other night when we were hanging out engaged in one of those deep intellectual conversations we have all the time, was like, "I'm over it. I never thought I'd say this but it's possible for something to be too stupid for me to watch."
MEGAN: Also, only in wealthy Britain would your husband of 40 years like getting caned to the point that it leaves marks and draws blood regularly (or enough for him to differentiate between caning, whipping, beating and spanking) and you not notice the marks. Like, for real. Did they sleep bundled?
MEGAN: As for the deal with S&M, I mean, I'm no afficianado, but I think it speaks to the reality that the brain really is the only true sexual organ.
MOE: Can braindead people get off? I don't really think I believe it. Re reality TV it looks like some guy from the first season of the Real World is running for Congress, which I suppose is just another sign of our generation passing the Pointlessness baton to the Youngs. I suppose I ought to give mine up too but first I want to write a post on whether Charlize Theron is actually smart.
MEGAN: Um, I think all I can say after reading that is: Brooklynites, please vote for Ed Towns.
MOE: Have you been reading any of these space dominance stories? Because I keep meaning to and not. Are we worried China's space program is going to find a place to launch excess emissions before we do and leave us to be dessicated by the global warming Dick Cheney is still maintaining does not exist?
MEGAN: I'll confess, the last story I bothered clicking on about space travel was this one about fucking in space.
MEGAN: But, no, because we're going to pump all our carbon dioxide into the empty pockets under the sea from whence we will be extracting oil, so it'll all be fine. Once we, like figure out how to do it.
MOE: Here's another headline I like: "Meet Huzaifa Parhat, who personifies the absurdity of U.S. policy in Guantanamo Bay." Uh, yeah, as opposed to all the other victims of U.S. policy in Guantanamo Bay. I saw that post on drudge. What's with the headlines today? "For Better of Worse, Sex In Space Is Inevitable." That's better than this post I saw on TNR the other day, "6 Reasons The Border Fence Is A Bad Idea." I am guiltier than anyone here but Jesus CHRIST I feel like building a border fence around the internet.
MEGAN: Maybe all the good headline writers took the week off and are vacationing with Jon Stewart?
MOE: No, they all took buyouts silly! My mom has been railing against the buyouts at the Washington Post. It's really odd to remember things like READERS ACTUALLY NOTICE.

MEGAN: Your mom might be the only one, though! The real question is whether Americans will notice the scaled-back convention coverage that's supposedly to "offset" the costs of Obama going to a bigger venue for his speech but is really just an excuse for the networks to do what then have been dying to do for years and cut back on boring convention coverage that no one watches anyway. Plus, they can't do it for the DNC and not not for the RNC so it's like a bonus.
MOE: I think w/r/t this War Powers Resolution act I would be part of the problem because I can't really finish the story and I know it has to do with the fighting over powers among the various branches of government and probably Dick Cheney knows best anyway right? But like, what does this resolution say? It was passed in pre-Watergate Nixon times…is it just really scary?
MEGAN: I mean, the thing is, that Constitutionally, to declare war on anybody, the President has to go to Congress to ask permission. But, like, that's haaaaard. So that's why Vietnam wasn't really a war and this isn't really a war, etc. And basically, since WWII, Congress and the Administration have tried to come up with a way to bypass Congress's Constitutional powers in the matter, because just like Americans supposedly all believe they'll be rich someday and thus supposedly don't want higher taxes on rich people, everyone on the Hill thinks they'll be President someday and thus is enamored with executive power, which is the thing our Founding fucking Fathers tried so hard to control.
MOE: Oh, and Osama Bin Laden's evildoer son looks young enough to be the son of OBL's other son, you know, the one with the British cougar wife who looks like she writes soft sadomasochistic erotica…ANYWAY, that made me think, when was the last time someone had a kid at the White House? What if the Obamas had another kid? I bet Rush would send the nicest presents.
MEGAN: So the War Powers Resolution sucks, and hasn't been used, and gives Congress very limited oversight and the Administration a lot of war-declaration power but it's never been used and Administrations have continued to drag us into armed conflicts that aren't "wars" by just going around it. Baker and Christopher suggest writing a new one with a robust role for Congress (thank GOD) — at least on the surface — as well as powers to the President but it requires oversight and consultation for any military action lasting more than a week, requires Congressional approval of military actions within 30 days (but exempts covert actions and response to terrorist attacks, SIGH, which just gives a reason for the next Bushie to declare that Iran is part of the War on al Qaeda or whatever but something is better than nothing).
MEGAN: And I love how the kid is against us, Britain, France... and Denmark. Denmark's probably all like, what the fuck, kid? We've got Danishes and beer and shit.
MOE: Anyway apparently this 16-year-old Hamza Bin Laden is Osama Bin Laden's "likely heir." Or, that is, according to the lofty source that is the Sun. OH, and I loved the Denmark thing too. Like, I bet we could write a comic book and get added to their terror list. Or maybe a YouTube video. Yes, that, exactly. Although, on second thought, I feel like I sort of know what it's like to be on a terror list. I'm back to joining the Iranian resistance if you're in.
MEGAN: Do I have to dye my hair dark like Ashleigh Banfield? Because I look really gothy with dark hair, even without the makeup. Not that I, uh, have any experience with that or anything. Nope.
MOE: Oh shit how did I miss this haha Republican convention planners want him out of town before McCain even gets there? Like, if you thought McCain's temper was reserved for Sandinistas and his wife you have no idea how he gets around his actual enemies.
MEGAN: Also, I love how they're floating that to see what the backlash will be to it.
MOE: I will say this, too: I was at this thing, the other night, called "Shoot The Messenger," and before the evening took a turn for the, er, interesting, the comics had a funny segment about who registered Republicans think John McCain should pick as a running mate, with 45% choosing John McCain 2000 for his appeal to the independents and 35% choosing John McCain 2004 for his appeal with supporters of the war. Anyway, it made me laugh. That is all.

MOE: Hahaha see I still have a soft spot for McCain 2008 God bless him'
MEGAN: You know, my grandmother (who I saw a week ago) said that she had been a huge Hillary supporter and was really disappointed that she lost, but no way in hell would she vote for 2008 McCain. She said she thinks he's senile and an idiot, and that it's his creeping senility that makes him so different in 2008 than he was in 2000 when she would have considered voting for him. My grandmother, by the way, is 81.
MOE:

"You know that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran?" he said, then sang "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" before discussing what he considered Iran's serious threat to Israel and international security.

MOE: There is a storied history in the Tkacik household of cracking senile jokes as early as age 10, for which we ended up coining the blanket rejoinder "Yeah, grandpa." So like, I have a total weakness for the Grandpa humor. I could write a book of tasteless Grandpa jokes throughout history even. Anyway, just a thought. Not that I don't love the crowd here! I feel like the news is BORING today. Is it me?

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.

MEGAN: So, once again, you're officially the world's most reliably friend and Crappy Hour replacement and I owe you drinks and probably Moe does too.
SPENCER: what happened to Jezebel's own Nancy Spungeon this morning
MEGAN: She is stuck in a never ending bureaucratic nightmare that involves queues and, apparently, no email access.
SPENCER: well there is hope
because what that describes has taken place at guantanamo bay for the past 7 years
and yesterday it came to an end
MEGAN: Well, sort of. I don't see them shutting it down today.
SPENCER: somewhat.
right you are!

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey says the Supreme Court's decision on Guantanamo detainees won't affect military trials against enemy combatants.

Mukasey, speaking Friday at a Group of Eight meeting of justice and home affairs ministers, said he was disappointed with the decision.

but there's absolutely no legal rationale for the camp anymore
MEGAN: God, it's so disappointing when you have to stop raping the Constitution.
SPENCER: one of my favorite pieces of Bush-era memorabilia
MEGAN: Mukasey's got a case of Constitutional abuse blue balls.
SPENCER: are two memos, both by John Yoo, about GTMO from early 2002
in the first, Yoo says that we need to stash detainees at GTMO in order to circumvent the Federal Torture Statute, which governs actions by Americans abroad — the rationale being that GTMO is American soil
MEGAN: John Yoo, who can safely proselytize his own special brand of "constitutional analysis" from his chair at UC Berkeley's law school.
SPENCER: as anyone who's ever been there — and i'm still hungover, that place is one huge party — can attest
but in the next memo, he says that the virtue of GTMO is that detainees won't have any rights in federal court, because GTMO is outside American soil
put that in the time capsule
savor it first, with its flinty-yet-rich aroma
MEGAN: Mmm, yummy, it's like sheep crap in the midst of a hot summer.
SPENCER: hey, look, i wrote about getting yoo kicked off the Berkeley faculty
there's an effort afoot by former Clinton official & Berkeley prof Brad DeLong
in the comments of this piece "ufred" asked if DeLong was really "as zealous as the fool he condemns"
"ufred" is MY DAD
my dad is one of my comment trolls
anyway
MEGAN: Speaking of shit, we should probably briefly discuss Mark Penn's insane rantings about the campaign.
SPENCER: oohhhh yeah i LOVED that piece
MEGAN:

So who didn’t listen to you?
Well, look, it’s not that people didn’t listen. It’s that people had a different idea of how you win against him. I had the idea that the best way to win against him would have been to go against him like any normal candidate as early as possible, because, as I often say, once the cat’s out of the bag, you really can’t put the cat back. It becomes a ten-times-harder task. And so we fundamentally disagreed on whether to take him on, on Iraq, you know.…
When you say “we”—
[laughs] Well, me. And President Clinton sided with me throughout this. The rest of the campaign… Look, their views were honorable views. It’s what they felt. I just think—

So it was you and the president against the rest of the campaign?
Me and the president thought, Take him on, take him on early. You know, bring out the fact that he gave these interviews saying that his views now were about the same as Bush and that his votes were the same as Hillary’s. And you know, therefore, take away a lot of the myth that’s brought up about his Iraq position. If you were to go through all of the strategy memos and all the preparations, it was always about, “What’s the difference between us and Obama? How can we illustrate that? How can we make that clearer?”

So, guess who Mark Penn is really actually loyal to? Hint: it's not Hillary. Seems like that might've been part of the problem.
SPENCER: well, let's take this up for a second
let's say penn's argument carries the day and HRC went into Obama's Iraq record
how is that a net plus for her? all it does is remind voters that she backed the war
no?
MEGAN: No, he's got an answer for that, too!
SPENCER: even if she was able to highlight some earlier, less-strident opposition on his part?
MEGAN:

Why do you think the rest of the team was afraid to go after him?
I think they thought that her position on Iraq wasn’t strong enough to sustain a debate on Iraq.

Or popular enough.
Right. But her position, remember—we went through the early discussion of “Was it a mistake? Should she apologize?” Of course, the rest of the team wanted her to apologize. [laughs] And you know, she weathered that extremely well. She didn’t apologize, because she had given a speech outlining her position. On that day. And that speech held up. It actually explained why she voted for Iraq and why it was a sincere vote at the time.

SPENCER: HAHAHAHAHA
here's where Hillary really was victimized by the one-two punch of Mark Penn and sexism
MEGAN: I love how he's right and everyone else is obviously wrong. I hate this guy.
SPENCER: the interview makes clear that penn really does believe that HRC needed to vote for the war

People who try to dissect your role say, “Everybody wanted to humanize her, and Mark Penn wanted to prove that she was capable of being commander in chief.” Do you regret that?
No. No. The basis of people being able to support her is the belief that she could be president of the United States.

see there he's indisputably correct
HRC or any woman will always, unfortunately, have a harder time of this than any man
and that's one of the reasons, in 2002, Mark Penn was telling her — not that he acknowledges this in the interview — to vote for the war
the implicit premise being that if she opposed the war, she'd never be able to pass the CINC test
and the honest answer to that? we'll never know
MEGAN: Wow, I never thought about it like that.
SPENCER: but it's clear over the last couple days of retrospectives
that while sexism was indisputably a massive obstacle for HRC's campaign — "iron my shirt," etc etc, you guys on jezebel know this much better than i possibly can — if HRC hadn't voted for the war there would have been absolutely no rationale for Barack Obama's campaign
none at all
he probably wouldn't have either wanted to run, or would only have run to raise his profile for a future presidential bid, or in any event wouldn't have gotten much traction with Dem voters
MEGAN: But, I think you're totally right, he says the whole time that it was about proving her capable, as though people really thought she wasn't. Like, the premise is the idea that people would question a woman as CINC, and I don't think that was ever really part of the debate, not when it came to her. I didn't like her, but I never questioned that she was capable of doing the job, I just figured she wouldn't do it the way I wanted it done.
SPENCER: and the sad truth is that men, and even some women, see this differently than you
MEGAN: I agree that it was definitely an early, obvious difference on which Obama was able to hang his hat and garner a lot of support.
SPENCER: even if they don't want a war they still want to believe that she would launch one if necessary even if the one she voted for was unnecessary
MEGAN: But couldn't she have countered that argument with Bosnia and Kosovo? Afghanistan, even?
SPENCER: and if she recanted her support for the war, you would have seen McCain or whomever saying that you can't trust these flighty menopausal women with matters of life and death because who knows when they'll change their minds
ask Howard Dean.
and, as much as he's a pussy, he's not even a woman!
MEGAN: Howard Dean has been the ball-less wonder of this primary season.
SPENCER: the public, i'm sorry to say, doesn't give a shit about Afghanistan, which is both more important to us than Iraq and descending to nearly the same level of hell
MEGAN: I just get the sense that Mark Penn didn't get Hillary, he got Bill and rather than providing her with objective advise based on her needs as a candidate, he chatted with Bill (not an unbiased guy) and did his polls and fought with people he didn't like and fucked it up and is now blaming everyone else and I hope no one ever pays him again for a campaign but there's no justice in the world so he'll continue being rich as sin the end.
SPENCER: the next time we have a woman candidate for president, she'll either have to not been a part of the iraq debate; vote against it from the start; or support a current/popular/justified/successful war
MEGAN: And, yes, Afghanistan is fucked.
Anyway, so on to other fucked things. UMass have Mugabe an honorary degree once but finally yanked it this week.
Oh, and Britain's "reviewing" his knighthood.
SPENCER: my friend Samantha "Monster!" Power once wrote a great Atlantic piece about why you might be able to credibly consider Mugabe a genocidaire
he's a knight???
MEGAN: An honorary one, apparently, yes.
SPENCER: whoa
didn't he just re-imprison Morgan Tsvangirai?
MEGAN: I know, I mean, do you get to call the Brits all the crap he's called them in the last few years as he's tried to desperately hold onto power by starving and killing his own people
SPENCER: did the brits ever even revoke his commonwealth travel privileges? i don't remember
MEGAN: He re-arrested him yesterday but they're charging another, less internationally-known party official with genocide.
SPENCER: now here's a task for the next president
MEGAN: Yeah, they revoked his privileges the last "election"
SPENCER: as part of the U.S.'s reintroduction to a durable international order
shepherd our entry into the International Criminal Court
MEGAN: Tendai Biti, if he's found guilty which he will be if they want him to be, will probably face execution.
Isn't the Pentagon totally opposed to that, though?
SPENCER: and seek to bring war-crimes charges against Mugabe
oh yes
MEGAN: I thought I remembered that from grad school. Good to know nothing's changed.
SPENCER: but it's a groundless fear cynically stoked by the right
no one is bringing any charges against any american service(wo)man
or general
the court would be 99.999999999% more likely to focus on criminal heads of state
oh speaking of, another one for our Bush-era time capsule
way way back in 2003
MEGAN: Well, it's not that I thought it wasn't a groundless fear. But, yes, Mugabe should face something but he probably won't. Besides, he's still got Mbeki's support I think.
SPENCER: one of the favorite activities of the Pentagon's Doug Feith
MEGAN: Besides masturbating to gay beastiality porn?
SPENCER: was to force countries to renounce their Article 98 rights to refer foreign countries to the ICC if they wanted in on lucrative Iraq contracting
why?
because Feith knew we were torturing motherfuckers in Iraq
which is a war crime
indictable by the ICC
so, spiting the Iraqi people and foreign allies, that's exactly what he did
in the interests of Bush/Rumsfeld/Feith's declared right to torture Iraqis
MEGAN: So, but would they be indicting soldiers or the ones who ordered them to do it? Like, say, Feith.
SPENCER: the honest thing to say is that the ICC's so new it hasn't been tested
but the Nuremburg-era principle of command responsibility PRESUMABLY holds
and you only saw top regime officials prosecuted, right, my german-scholar friend?
MEGAN: Indeed, but there was also a de-Nazification program, sort of copied in Iraq less successfully, as I recall
SPENCER: oh much less successfully!
MEGAN: So, like, the idea was to blame command, let everyone else off the hook to restart the society and kind of pretend like it was all Hitler's fault and no one else's. Ahem. People who voted for Bush in 2004.
SPENCER: to which Doug Feith, like Mark Penn, blames... everyone else
that is a compromise i will take for now
MEGAN: God, it's like a fucking sport in Washington, the CYA-lympics.

• 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.

Freedom makes you long for fried potatoes, some of which he'll bring you from the MP canteen if you let him win a few rhetorical rounds. "Philosophically, I suppose I am also seeking love," you allow. But that soon becomes irksome. You remind him that he would, were his society less inculcated in materialism, probably take eternal life with 69 virgins or whatever the stupid legend has it. No, he knows he knows nothing of the pain suffered by your people at the hands of his, their tragic marginalization and disenfranchisement at the hands of Dudes like himself, just as you know that, in his position, you would probably be a little rougher about flouting those Geneva Conventions. He used to dream of "cracking" a high-level suspect like yourself; but "cracking" is probably apocryphal; no one in this wing of the prison has ever seen it happen and now everyone's curiosity has receded into a quiet unacknowledged acceptance of the fact that everyone there is seeking the same thing: Death.

(With virgins.)

Alleged 9/11 Mastermind Due In Court [Washington Post]

• 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: Hey! Look! We're on the same couch!
hahaha I heard that! Someone's IM-ing you!

MEGAN: And both hung over!

MOE: You're supposed to be doing crappy hour!

MEGAN: It was you! I swear! God, you're soooo jealous.

MOE: Oh, yes, I'm hungover. I have these friends who actually have the day off!

Whoa! Jumpy much?
MEGAN: There was a gnat!

MOE: (Megan just killed a "bug")

Okay dude, so we have soooo"are a contributor to global warming.

MOE: This is why I drink kombucha.

I like my gut flora.

Anyway this wasn't even ON the agenda today.
MEGAN: Oh, like we have an "agenda." That's for grown-ups

And/or people without hangovers who work in their PJs
MOE: So like Harold and Kumar are going to Guantanamo, bro!
MEGAN: That's what Kal Penn gets for supporting Obama!
MOE: It's just one of the many examples that the fact we have this random prison in a country we don't even recognize for people we think might be terrorists but no one has enough evidence to press charges!

oh let's finish that sentence1

It's just one of the many examples that the whole Guantanamo thing has sorta seized the public imagination!

Imagine that!
It comes out April 25

MEGAN: I think that the public would rather the prison was fictional. I know I'd like it better that way.

MOE: How many prisoners are still left there?
MEGAN: several hundred
MOE: I really wish that story had been written by the Washington Post.

My old friend Jon wrote Harold & Kumar with his college buddy one summer at Penn.
I was always so proud of him bc he went to Wharton and usually people who go to Wharton wind up just making their money by gambling with other people's money but he actually gambled with his creative soul!
So like

MEGAN: The only famously immature person from my alma mater is Howard Stern.
MOE: Ooooooh we have Donald Trump and Saul Steinberg and Warren Buffett. And Andrea Mitchell but whatevs. And Melissa Rivers! ANYHOWZE
Kosovo declared independence! Should we talk about this? And by "we" I mean "you" because all I remember about Kosovo is how they are ethnic Albanians or whatever, and Albania had that whole ponzi scheme thing.

And how we used to like to stick up for the religious freedom of Muslims.

MEGAN: Um, I know their PM is hott.

MOE: Until we realized they were EEEEVIL et.c
MEGAN: And Kissinger droned on about them during his speech at my college graduation in 1999

Which, like, it's 2008 and something is only now happening?
Also, the Serbs don't like it, and their PM claims that it's all a violent thing initiated by Bush, only his supporters slept off their hangovers before getting around to initiating some violence before his speech so they did it after.
And then they stoned our embassy in Belgrade.
Oh, and the UN still has to protect Serbian minorities in Kosovo from violence from Kosovars.
MOE: Now, Putin hates Kosovo bc of Chechnya? Or just bc he's EEEEVIL?
MEGAN: Um, I'm voting Evil. Putin hates breakaway provinces, and anything supported by us, like Kosovo. And Muslims. Especially breakaway Muslims.
MOE: Right. But he's down with like Iran and Syria right?
MEGAN: Yeah. I'm pretty sure he's just jealous because everyone thinks Thaci is prettier.
MOE: Okay sooooo Jessica Baty
MEGAN: I feel so awful for her when she starts crying.
MOE: The girlfriend of Steven Kazmierczak says he was on Prozac.

I feel like crying when she cries.
"Interest in Nietzche is the one thing all school shooters have in common." That might be the only thing he shares with them though.
MEGAN: I feel like the aggressive wearing of all black clothing is another thing.
MOE: But yeah, reading about how he was so focused on prison reform and rehabilitating criminals and giving people who had fucked up a fair shake — that probably points to something. Maybe like rabidly homophobic Christians who are closet gays! OR something.
So, uh, what's happening on the John Edwards endorsement front? Predictions?

MEGAN: Well, one of the reports I read yesteday said they he was cutting himself while in juvie, and then wrote a thesis on self-mutilation in the prison system.
I think Edwards waited too long to be relevant.

I mean, he dropped out ages ago, and Mitt dropped out last week, and Mitt's endorsed by Johnny hasn't

MOE: And should we discuss how Obama has convinced Charles Barkley to run for governor of Alabama?
MEGAN: In 2014!

MOE: Well Edwards can make up for poor timing with a good speech if he does it soon.

MEGAN: Soon being the operative word.

MOE: If he does it this week he can get a whole week of coverage.
MEGAN: But he's "torn," like Natalie Imbruglia and thus equally irrelevant
MOE: Hahaha I just saw random pix of Natalie Imbruglia on one of the wire services! She was hanging out with Natalia Vodianova, Lucy Liu and Valentino at some really weird looking event that has to have taken place in a foreign country.

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE.
MEGAN: But, yes, Edwards needs to make up his mind really soon
MOE: I'm looking for fun art re Guantanamo and it's hard! Did you see Sicko? He went there but it was hard to get in.
Oh and speaking of ...Morgan Spurlock! Loser.

MEGAN: And, by hard, I assume you mean "he almost got blowed up"
I just don't understand why you would go to Afghanistan to search for OBL and think you wouldn't face crazy death threats.

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 gues