• Yes, obviously, women are just like fried chicken, insofar as they can be reduced only to the assets men like. Also, for the record, have you gotten a good side shot of Hillary's breasts? They're not small, not that it matters, but I prefer accuracy in my insults. Plus, if people (mostly men) are going to demean me and think I'm stupid for having large ones, I really think they ought to get their shit together and tell us all what size breasts we ought to have to be taken seriously even though I know the answer is, obviously, "you need a penis."
  
  
• Unflattering picture? Check. Reference to her book It Takes a Village which Republicans somehow hated despite the fact that it was about family values and shit? Check. Insult to her intelligence? Check. Insult to her home state? Yup. Humor? Oh, shit, guess they forgot that.
  
  
  

• Never mind, the last one was funny in comparison. She's so stupid! Hardeeharhar! Gosh, I love me some jokes about how the ladies are dumb.
  
  
  
  
  

• Hillary's a bi-itch! Hillary's a bi-itch! I mean, does anyone take this seriously as an insult anymore? I got called this in the 7th grade, it lost its power over me pretty quick and, besides, like, all it really means is that the person who is calling you it has some outdated stereotype about how women are all supposed to be peaches and sunshine and sugar and spice, which I think makes the person who buys that crap about women my bitch.
  

• Ah, back to the stereotype that all Democratic women are man-hating lesbians. Just because I'd rather fuck a woman than a dude that was wearing this button doesn't make me a lesbian, I don't think, it's just that some choices in life are easier than others.
  
  

• Actually, I'm failing to see how this is an insult to Democrats. It's basically admitting that Republicans are uncreative lovers who suck in the sack and are all about showing dominance rather than having great sex. Seems about right, although I swear the only guys more into anal sex in D.C. than my gay friends are Republicans.

• Because Monica Lewinsky is the only person to ever give a blow job, ever, in the history of the world (or, at least that's what the unfellated dudes that would buy this pin know in their heart of hearts), it's apparently totally cool to forever more associate her image with shit like this. Can't she sue or something? There have got to be some Jezelawyers on this shit.

Anyway, so, it's hard to decide whether Adler's one racist pin trumps his many, many sexist pins, but it only took 2 days for that one to go away and these get to stay. Betcha they do pretty good sales, too.

Vendor Who Sold Racist Obama Pin Apologizes [Dallas Morning News]

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.

It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart-the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour. Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.

As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day's horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

"This is just like Pearl Harbor," one of the men said.

The other asked, "What is Pearl Harbor?"

"That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War," the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, "I decided to write this book."

We are all complete dumbasses incapable of even the most moderate level of knowledge retention, much less concentration. The computer on which you are reading this blog is rotting your brain. We have fooled ourselves into believing there is no piece of information worth knowing that can't be distilled into a pithy blog entry, because no piece of information longer than a pithy blog entry seems capable of finding a viable market of readers these days, and the market always knows best; this country certainly did not come into the position of consuming 25% of the world's resources on 5% of its population by ignoring that.

But hey! We can still make this a post that mainly hates on men: do you think dude culture is more hostile to knowledge, or lady culture? Dudes definitely have the "arrogant" market cornered. But our magazines are so much dumber.

Dumb And Dumber: Are Americans Hostile To Knowledge? [NY Times]
The Dumbing Of America [Washington Post]

Gains among the Gennifer Flowers set aren't surprising—Hillary has doggedly pitched programs (which are obviously unappealing to a conservative like me) such as universal healthcare, universal paid leave, and even $5,000 "baby bonds" to rally the low-income, uneducated women she enjoys strong support from. Her campaign even has a special name for them: "women with needs." Labels like this make me think Hillary is the woman in "need". As in, she "needs" taxpayer money to give to the women she "needs" votes from.

Annnnnyhow, obviously this bitch is a total cunt, and please don't be offended by that word, not that I care. I would say I don't understand how they convince women to become Republicans, but that would be a lie because I totally do; the plain fact is that some women are totally evil and evil people like becoming Republicans, and I would say that explains this one. I don't, for the record, think that explains Coulter, who is somehow fun for me. No, this chick is just your run of the mill racist pretty Satanist Christian airhead born without the empathy gene, I'm pretty sure, though that could be fun for me too. Whatever! I'll think about it on Monday. TChristIF!

Glamocracy

Sorry if I'm getting out of the realm of the "point of view of young women" here, but uh...why else was I supposed to care about that guy's widow?

I mean, she is pretty.

Anyway, on the plus side they have tapped Rebecca Roberts, a satellite radio broadcaster and daughter of Cokie, has been tapped as on of the bloggers. And if the latest entry from Glamour dating blog "Man Needs Date" is anything to go by, Glamour is having a Come-to-Jesus moment:

For the last couple of weeks, while not fantasizing about eating Turkey and stuffing, I have been struggling with writing a blog that is more real.....It's like every time I sit at the keyboard to write about my true feelings, it is either too difficult to face or define or maybe it's easier to crack a few frat-boy jokes and tell you what we had for dinner and how many times we rocked the casbah!

I really don't know how I feel about [a woman in the White House]. I see the positive parts of it. But, you know, I think there's something incredible about a First Lady. That, to me, is a woman in the White House. It's sort of like being parents to the United States, and she takes on the role of mother and confidante and care-giver. Standing behind every powerful man, there's a powerful woman...I don't want to say no, because that doesn't sound very open-mined. But do I want it to be Hillary? No, I don't think so.

Also, we learn Angie is married to a former football player with whom she likes to vacation in Las Vegas, was discovered by David Hasselhoff — "please don't make it sound cheesy, because that's not what it was" — wears silk pajamas that are lined in cashmere, took the stage during the Republican National Convention, loves to shop, would like to have another child but is "waiting on God," has a four-year-old daughter with a pet gecko that totally grosses her out although she is "confident that at any point she will be into Christian Louboutin instead of the lizard," and credits her high school cheerleading coach with instilling in her the confidence to realize she was "not a complete idiot."

Just because I'm friendly, and I like to guffaw when I laugh, and have a cold beer and hang out with my husband and my girlfriends, doesn't mean that I'm not just as intelligent as someone from, let's say, Manhattan.

Anyway, the writer, Amy Spencer, mysteriously fails to mention Fred Thompson, which could be because she, too, is just as intelligent as someone "from Manhattan," or more likely, because she asked Angie about the election and Angie was like, "huh? Oh no I was planning on endorsing Pat Tillman..."

and why yes, they did! According to this source, 9/11 hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi actually "spent a lot of time at the San Diego State University library, surfing the Web.." And learning to hate us? Um, yeah. All but one of these fine young scholars is a woman, probably one who is late for her tanning salon appointment right now, sort of like we are realllly late for our Jim Beam.

All these girls are grown girls, but they sure dont act like it. They are all imature and need to grow up. I hope yall aren't planning on starting a family, because your kids would grow up in a mean world.

ok to all the jealous girls out here

this is for you

i am not stupid

that question that i got at miss teen usa was not the easiest question and with ten million people watching me LIVE, i was nervous

yeah like you wouldn't be

so to you girls out there.

get a life and stop being so mean

i did not even have time to think about it

i am smart, not a dumb blonde like you think

kthanks

I personally believe the U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa or should help the Iraq and Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us.

Wall of Meanness Sarah Womack Today at 7:59am Report Message

Are you the dumb bitch that humiliated America? Do us all a favor and write an eloquent apology to the nation and then quit the whole stupid blond beauty queen thing and start studying harder.

This one if from a really mean girl who thinks i humilated America. Well guess what hon, you just humilated yourself. I am putting this up on my blog where two thousdand people can see it everyday and think about how mean you were to me. If you mess with me, you get what you deserve. =)

Another really mean girl
this one is my favorite.

in like, South Africa...
Between You and Natali Wind
Natali Wind
9:09pm August 25th
Report Message
You're a stupid whore.

ok wow
so this loser just messaged me out of the blue
can we all say jealousy
this was really mean but guess what
i dosen't hurt me
it only hurts yourself
what goes around comes around
this one is also going on my blog where thousands of people look everyday
kthanks
=0

this really isn't funny. the question wasen't to identify the US. obviously i could do that. what is with yu girls these days. why do yall feel like you have to be mean to other people to make yourself feel better.your not hurting anyone but yourself. i dont care about your little messages. they dont hurt me. so leave me alone and live your own life. stop trying to change myn.

SO this guy also randomly messaged me. and yet again i did asolutely nothing to him.

Matt Slade
10:53pm August 28th
Report Message
You are so stupid...How the hell did you get 4th...must be because you are blonde twit and thats what Donald like...fuck!!!

ok so you saw two min. of my national tv meltdown. you have never talked to me, seen me in person, or even met me, so how can you say i am stupid. can you honestly say you have never made a mistake in your life. serisously. and my hair color has nothing to do with it. dont judge me when you dont even know me. and stupid. i am anything but. i have a 4.0 grade average and a full academic schlorship to ASU. yeah, im real stupid. get a life. your not hurting me, only yourself

[Los Angeles, June 14. Image via x17]

Earlier: Jennifer Aniston Is The Next 50 Cent
Related: Aniston Gets Smart About Saving Water [Radar]

• Karl Lagerfeld has commissioned 15 contemporary artists to create works inspired by his iconic quilted Chanel bag for a two-year touring exhibit. Kind of interesting how iconic handbags are like the Virgin Mary of now. Maybe in twenty years people will be seeing Hermes Birkin bags in their grilled cheese sandwiches and selling them on eBay. [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• The dress will remain the dominant fashion trend through Spring 2008, according to the owner of luxury retailer Louis Boston, who makes some weird reference to American global hegemony. [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• Dooney & Bourke releases a line of bags named for Emma Roberts (Julia's niece and current star of "Nancy Drew"), with prices ranging from $210 to $235. Remember how when you were reading Nancy Drew, you thought $215 was like, enough to buy a house? Ah, kids today! [WWD, 1st item]
  
• It's a boy for supermodel Eva Herzigova and her Italian businessman common law husband. Remember how she did all those Wonderbra ads, haha? Lactation jokes never get old! [Vogue UK]
  
• Fashion muse Isabella Blow's widower Detmar hopes to create a museum to house his late wife's extensive clothing collection, is "hoping all the people she helped in her life will cough up some money to get this up and running." Ooh, subtle! [Vogue UK]
  
• Why should European luxury brands expand in China and India when there are still soooo many [brace yourselves! Fave word alert!] aspirational middle Americans stuck with Coach? [Fashion Inc.]

[Cosmopolitan, July 2007, page 128]