MEGAN: Good morning! Was your Saturday night as "opulent" as McCain's? I mean, I know eating on the road sucks, but it doesn't seem like he had to come all the way back to D.C. after the debates to eat at a good hotel restaurant.

KAY: I know. This sort of puts Obama's claim about a Katrina-like response. I think what Obama meant was McCain's Katrina response. You know, when he and Bush were having a birthday party.

MEGAN: "Let them eat cake?" Oh, wait, that was Barbara Bush, never mind. I also love that he flew all the way back here after the debate to hang out in his Congressional office and call people, but that he couldn't be bothered to walk down to the Senate floor to vote on a spending bill that contained earmarks. I think he really has turned into a complete wuss. He didn't want to be seen voting for earmarks, nor voting against a spending bill that contained offshore drilling provisions, so he just went to dinner 5 minutes away.

KAY: Seems like a good use of time. Maybe he played some craps while he was at it —with the $700 billion bailout money.

MEGAN: I mean, who doesn't like a good Indian casino? Not McCain, that's for sure. Although, I'm just putting this out there, I haven't been in a casino yet, Indian or otherwise, that didn't make me grind my teeth. I don't think an alcoholic beverage should cost me $8 in the middle of nowhere in Connecticut.

KAY: Yeah, casinos tend to be filled with a lot of sad old people. I guess that includes McCain.

MEGAN: A lot of sad old people that aren't nearly drunk enough to be entertaining because they can't afford $6 beers and quarter slots at the same time. Sorry, I digress. I really, really hate casinos.

KAY: Don't worry, me too. In any case, we should probably say something about how McCain's debate performance on Friday was a big FAIL.

MEGAN: Oh, yeah, there's all kinds of evidence that he didn't play well with the crowds. I personally think it was because most Americans tuned out — figuratively or literally — once the discussion turned to foreign policy, so that most of them missed the preconditions/preparation debacle.

KAY: Well, it's easy to misspeak. McCain said we were at an "existential" crisis with Iran. I'm not even sure what that means. Did he just take freshman philosophy?

MEGAN: I know, I thought the same thing! But then I realized that he just meant that he thought Iran would be a threat to the existence of Israel, i.e., nuke it, and I wondered why the McCain camp is so obsessed with nuclear war and yet its Vice Presidential candidate can't correctly identify the purpose of the Bush Doctrine, which is to allow us to nuke people without provocation.

KAY: Well, if we're going to put nuclear war on the table we want to make sure we have at least one person "a heartbeat away" who has no clue about foreign policy

MEGAN: I mean, right? Palin's so bad even McCain's staffers are telling reporters that she's "clueless". And Jack Cafferty — no bastion of liberalism — had this to say:

"If John McCain wins this woman will be one 72-year-old's heartbeat away from being President of the United States. And if that doesn't scare the hell out of you, it should."

KAY: I know, even the right isn't so sure about her anymore. But at least we have Tina Fey to make us laugh. The thing is, those sketches are getting less funny the more true they are. I feel like this sketch was eerily similar to Palin's actual answer about the bailout.

MEGAN: I really thought some of what Tina Fey said early on was a direct quote, but I'd been drinking for 11 and a half hours at that point. I did find it uproariously funny.

KAY: It's always prudent to drink for 11 and a half hours.

MEGAN: It was a wedding! I was less amused at the part where she agreed with Obama on Pakistan and then McCain retracted it for her, though. Well, that and that she went to Geno's instead of Pat's. Geno's is the cheesesteak place with the signs requiring that you order in English.

KAY: Don't worry, I think the "October surprise" this year is going to be Bristol's wedding.

MEGAN: Well, it can't be that much of a surprise if we're already talking about it. Also, the thought of Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis dreamily talking about how marrying off Bristol Palin on her 18th birthday (it is a Saturday, after all!) is sort of incredibly creepy. Especially as a way to have the first-ever pre-election wedding in history. That's just, like, ewww.

KAY: So ewww. Well, we all know that you're not a real woman until you're married, right?

MEGAN: Well, you become a woman when you start bleeding out your cooch but only a real woman when you lock a man down to it for life or until the inevitable, painful and public divorce. I'm so glad that I'm not a girl and not yet a woman. And yes, I did just make a Britney reference. Seemed appropriate.

KAY: So appropriate.

• Cudmudgeonly uncle-anchor Jack Cafferty has disappointed millions of women everywhere by saying, "Viagra is used to treat a medical condition, erectile dysfunction. Birth control is a lifestyle choice," when discussing John McCain's little birth control gaffe. Jack, sweetie, birth control pills do treat medical conditions and there's a good economic argument (pregnancy is expensive) for covering them. Erectile dysfunction, however, is God's way of telling you to keep it in your pants, old man. [Crooks & Liars]
• John McCain has proved a disappointment to the Secret Service by letting slip details of Barack Obama's highly secret-for-his-own-safety trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. Man, he really will do anything to keep playing his commercial about how Obama's never been. [Talking Points Memo, The Atlantic]

• By the way, McCain also doesn't know if Obama is a Socialist or not. I don't know that John McCain doesn't drink Cindy's drug-filled urine as a sedative, either. What don't you know? [HuffPo]
• The full list of Starbucks closures is now available. Caffeinated Washingtonians rejoice: Only one in D.C.! [HuffPo]
• Harold Ford got booed at Netroots Nation because he used to work at Fox News, but not because he used to date Julia Allison. [HuffPo]
• The German government has decided to let Obama speak — at the Victory Column, not the Brandenburg Gate because the Bushies kinda asked them not to. Wankers. [HuffPo]
• Scott Peterson has a blog. I think we can finally call this blogging trend over; no one's ever going to believe we're normal people now. [CNN]
• Greta Van Susteren, like, totally swears that she knows someone who knows someone whose anti-Obama copy was watered down at CNN, not that it ever happened to her and she's totally got journalistic freedom (if not freedom from the plastic surgery requirement) at Fox News and is she up for a new contract soon or something? [Fishbowl NY]

MOE: DUDE I AM SO HUNGOVER
MOE: You have to help me today i have the brainpower of a computer that came before the Macintosh IIGS. I have the brainpower of an abacus. Ugh, nevermind I have the brainpower of someone who drank away their ability to construct metaphors. I had guests.
MEGAN: Dude, that sucks. I still dehydrated from the last two days of being hungover.

MEGAN: Um, Calderone asked Bob Herbert about Ferraro.
MEGAN: With predictable results.

MEGAN: Um, Jenna Bush-Hager and Henry Hager cut their honeymoon short to attend his b-school graduation, which I've actually been wondering for months why they scheduled their wedding a week before his graduation.
MOE: I think Jenna just doesn't give a fuck
MEGAN: Well, I mean, who among us does really?
MOE: Not Bob Herbert!... I feel somewhat sheepish now for defending him
MOE: But mostly I feel a headache

MEGAN: Hmm, well, Attackerman is all steamed about Hillary comparing the Michigan and Florida shit to Zimbabwe, and I can't say I blame him. Her comparing it to the struggle for civil rights for African-Americans struck me as a bit of inappropriate overreaching.
MOE: Hahaha like that Phyllis Schlafly line from the St. Louis newspaper. "Whatever your thoughts, she's no Robert Mugabe." God I can't believe she actually said this

saying it is wrong when “people go through the motions of an election only to have them discarded and disregarded.”

“We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe," Clinton explained. "Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people,” Clinton told the crowd of senior citizens at a retirement community in south Florida.

MEGAN: She's the MLK of delegate counts and everything. It's sort of annoying, because it's not like she can win anyway.
MOE: Uh here's a story that says some analysts think oil prices are just too high.
MEGAN: Anyway, in a completely awkward segue, Spencer's headline was an R. Kelly lyric, he took great pains to inform me, so it gives me an opportunity to link to a story about the trial and they're actually fucking arguing that the piss might be digital. Dude, R. Kelly's fucking defense team is taking legal advice from Dave Chappelle.
9:20 AM
MEGAN: Wait, you have to be an analyst to think oil prices are maybe too high? Good to know. I looked at a gas station on my way out of NY yesterday and it was over $4/gallon.
MOE: I see your humorous R. Kelly newsflash and raise you a Al Sharpton Dr. Dre blackmail allegation.
MEGAN: I concede to your comic brilliance.
MOE: Oh also I guess the farm bill passed anyway
MOE: I like this graf:

In a statement issued to AllHipHop.com, they say: "The National Action Network and Reverend Al Sharpton were not involved with and did not attend a press conference held by Hip-Hop artists The Game and 50 Cent to announce their truce and donation to charities.

MOE: Hahaha the commenters call him "Al Charlatan"
MEGAN: On the Farm Bill, no, it's totally all fucked up. They passed one, FORGOT to send part of it to the President, so he vetoed a bill that they never passed and they overrode a veto on a bill they never voted for. Somebody would be getting fired if they didn't have an unassailable government job.

MOE: Karl Rove's takedown of Obama'f foreign policy instincts is sorta funny:

I recommend that he read Henry Kissinger's book, "The White House Years." Mr. Obama would learn it took 134 private meetings between U.S. and Chinese diplomats before a breakthrough at a Jan. 20, 1970 meeting in Warsaw. It took 18 months of behind-the-scenes discussions before Mr. Kissinger secretly visited Beijing. And it took seven more months of hard work before Nixon went to China. The result was a new relationship, announced in a communiqué worked out over months of careful diplomacy.

Diplomacy! Now there's a word I haven't heard in…
MOE: There's the link
MEGAN: Well, so, great. Seems like maybe it's time to start those discussions? Or is Karl admitting that the US has been holding secret, high-level discussions with Iran, Syria, Cuba and North Korea the whole time?
MOE: I was wondering what Melissa Block and Robert Siegel were doing at the scene of the earthquake.
MOE: Pursuing our imperial interest I suppose!

at one rescue scene, Block and Hsu had to be escorted away from a mob angered by the presence of American reporters. Both said the reaction probably was a response to Western coverage, particularly on CNN, of China's crackdown on dissidents in Tibet and the troubled Olympic torch relay. Said Siegel, "It's been said that everyone in China can quote Jack Cafferty," a CNN commentator who last month caused a furor in China by calling the country's leaders "goons and thugs."

MEGAN: Ok, but I kind of love Jack Cafferty. How are they more anti-him than anti-Lou Dobbs?
MOE: Maybe for some reason they are unused to people speaking accurately of political leaders? Yeah and on Dobbs I dunno.
MOE: What is happening with Florida and Michigan anyway?
MOE: Ugh Marie Cocco is back.
MEGAN: Oh, nothing right now. The DNC Rules Committee is meeting on the 31st. Clinton wants the whole delegation seated because it will give her 56 delegates more than Obama. The Rules Committee seems likely to give the states some sort of half delegation, which is the minimum punishment under the rules. Michigan's plan that's been presented to the Committee gives some delegates to Obama, so she'd end up with 16 more delegates than him under that scenario.
MOE: But like he WASN'T ON THE BALLOT
MEGAN: Yeah, so Michigan's plan is that they'd come a lot closer to splitting the delegation than the votes prescribe. I'm not totally sure why. Debbie Dingell explained it to me weeks ago on MSNBC.

MEGAN: Anyway, so, Clinton apparently though she had the committee locked up with 13 of the 28 members committed superdelegates to her, but Obama's got 8 and everyone is actually loyal to Howard Dean, so it doesn't seem likely to break her way. I'm calling half delegations.
MOE: Are you still in New York?
MEGAN: Nope, I had to come back for a thing today. I kind wish I could've stayed, but I guess that means I'll just have to go back, preferably when it's not pouring rain and I'm not wearing 5" open toed heels because I have a business meeting and they look good. But they did look really good.

MOE: THIS RAIN WILL NOT END.
MEGAN: Well, it's sunny here
MEGAN: So maybe it will get sunny there later?
MOE: GOD WILLING

• Rev. Jeremiah Wright is going on PBS tomorrow night to reflect on his newfound fame. "I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at Trinity United Church of Christ. And by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint, hint, hint?" [NYT]
  
• OMG who's winning in Indiana???? Check this space back at 11 p.m. for the results of the very latest poll. [Indianapolis Star]
  
• Speaking of Indiana, its local media went all the way to the Evansville Abercrombie to solve the mystery of the Aberdudes. Reportedly, they're neither gay nor did they plan their outfits that way. Times like this you really wish Toqueville was around but maybe we'll be in shape to fully fathom that tomorrow. [NYT]
  
• John McCain made the outlandishly courageous decision to distance himself from the Bush Administration with regards to its handling of Katrina. [Wash Post]

• Sometimes the urban elite needs the sad reality of the mindset of the provincial American electorate spelled out for them but a lifelong Londoner born in Moscow sorta seems like a weird guy to be doing that. [Times of London]
• Even racists find it hard to hate Obama so Republicans are trying to remind them how much they hate that awful rap music. [Reason]
• Someday, when oil hits $500 a barrel perhaps, they will develop a pharmacological cure for mullah fatigue syndrome. [BBC]
• The kind of legal action that sort of betrays a misunderstanding of the whole "freedom of speech" thing. [Reuters]
• Remember how all your friends who were responsible enough to buy houses over the past few years had all these horror stories about getting outbid and showing up at open houses at 8 a.m. to a line of 86 people? Yeah, well, things change. [WSJ] Sorry to be a bonerkiller, dudes, but it turns out you'll have to scratch "cancer avoidance" off your list of reasons to jerk off. [US News]