• Barack Obama and John McCain met this afternoon in which they talked about combating government waste and bitter partisanship and took some pretty, pretty pictures for us peons. [Washington Post]
• Vetting Bill Clinton's sketchy dealings in Central Asia and the donor list for his library might well cost Hillary Clinton her SecState job and prove that Obama was right to have been demanding those get released during the primaries. [Politico]
• But Obama is firmly against torture and keeping Guantanamo Bay open, so that's good at least. [Washington Independent]

• Senator Diane Feinstein (D-California) introduced legislation today to make it illegal to sell the free Inauguration tickets (punishable by a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison) or to forge them. Yipes. Get them legal or watch it on TV, ladies. [CNN]
• Connecticut Senator Joe "Benedict Arnold" Lieberman is now expected to keep his chairmanship but lose his subcommittee chairmanship as his "punishment" for betraying the Democratic party. I guess we know about how hard Harry Reid intends to push back on, like, anything now that he's solidified power. [Huffington Post]
• With that news, former Senator John "The Inseminator" Edwards has decided to stage his own comeback. [Daily Beast]
• Alabama Senator Richard Shelby — who's been the GOP's point person on negging the auto bailout — scolded South Carolina GOP Senator Jim DeMint — who's been gunning for more power in the party — for saying the Republican losses this year were the fault of John McCain's betrayal of the (social) conservative brand of the GOP. Abortion and gay marriage, that's all the GOP should be against, totally. [CNN]
• By the way, New Gingrich says that we are all a part of a "a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it." Yeah, fuck us for being all like "separation of church and state" and trying to take advantage of "equal protection under the law" and exercising our First Amendment rights to assemble and petition the government and shit. What fascists we all are. [Media Matters]

• Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid has decided that the entire Democratic caucus will vote next week whether Independent Senator Joe Lieberman will keep his seat as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee after having back John McCain and gone negative against Obama. [TPM Election Central]
• How negative did Lieberman really go? There's a video to count the ways. [Politico]
• And both the Clintons swear that — despite leaked reports that rather obviously came from Lieberman's camp — they aren't pushing to keep Lieberman at Homeland Security or in the caucus. [Politico]
• Racist Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss, who, according to the Constitution represents all the citizens of Georgia regardless of their race, knows the reason he didn't avoid a run-off election because not enough of "his" people turned out. You know, white people. That always vote for the white guy. Because they're white. [Think Progress]

• In the meantime, the Bushies are mad that the Obama folks leaked that Bush will only support an auto industry bailout if the Dems pass the Colombia FTA, as though that wasn't a legit assumption given that the Bushies already told the Hill that exact thing the day before. [Politico]
• Obama released his guidelines covering lobbyists' activities for his transition team and good government types think he is, like, so cool. [The Hill]
• And if the fact that he was able to outspend John McCain by crazy margins wasn't reason enough, it turns out that skipping public financing means Obama's campaign won't face a crazy audit. Raising tons of money means that if they did get some unlawful contributions, they would be so minor the FEC doesn't really care, either. McCain, though, gets the full accountant treatment, which is not as sexy-dirty as it sounds, sort of like how fucking an accountant isn't. [Politico]
• And Latino groups expect that Obama will appoint Latinos to the Cabinet. They are, apparently, pushing for Governor Bill "McGrabbyhands" Richardson, but I'm throwing my completely inconsiderable weight behind New York Congresswoman (and Small Business Committee Chair) Nydia Velázquez for the top spot at the Small Business Administration. LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is supposedly on the list for something (and is, strangely, one of Obama's economic transition advisers), but I think he's more likely to get a sub-Cabinet appointment than a Cabinet slot. [Washington Post]
• Alaska's verified 50,000 of its early and absentee ballots and will start counting them this week to see if convicted and corrupt Senator Ted Stevens will actually win re-election and thus give Governor Sarah Palin a shiny new Senate feather to add to her political cap. [CNN]
• The GOP has started smearing Minnesota's Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie in a misguided attempt to provoke peals of laughter from every Democrat that ever dealt with Katherine Harris and stop the legally-mandated recount in Minnesota because the margin separating Coleman and Franken is still teeny-tiny. Apparently, since 3 people heard him speak at a non-prime-time spot during the Democratic convention, Minnesotans don't need a recount. [TPM Muckraker]
• Noted cursing afficianado Joe Scarborough has earned himself a 7-second on-air delay for saying "Fuck you" earlier this week. My momma would've washed my mouth out with soap, but I could run faster. Not 7 seconds faster, though. [Politico]
• John Edwards has decided to give make his first public appearance following his admission that he fucked around on his wife. What do you think the odds are that audience members will ask him how he's coping with having cuckolded his wife the way that people seemingly insist on asking Elizabeth how she feels about it? Slim to none? [Time]
• Hopefully, the odds are better that the next Congress really will examine Bush's abuses of power next year. [Washington Independent]

Gwen Ifill moderated the 2004 debate between Vice President Dick Cheney and Senator John Edwards, asking a total of 20 questions. Ten of those questions were specifically about foreign policy — including the first 9 — while Cheney brought up foreign policy in two addition domestic policy questions and Edwards snuck it into one of his domestic policy answers. In the latter three cases, Edwards and Cheney responded to the other's foreign policy forays in kind. That means that foreign policy discussions comprised two-thirds of the last Vice Presidential debate.

Unlike the two Vice Presidential debates (Lieberman-Cheney and Gore-Kemp) before that, in 2008, this country has troops stationed abroad fighting in conflicts that we started — i.e., we're in the midst of two foreign wars— much as it did in 2004. During the Cheney-Edwards debate, the foreign policy questions were about Iraq, Afghanistan, the use of intelligence, Iran and Israel — gosh, it kind of seems like those might be ongoing and relevant issues, right? (Let alone that Sarah Palin has suggested that we go to war with Russia, attack Pakistan and has tried to burnish her foreign policy credentials by getting photo ops with world leaders might be relevant.) But Nancy Pfuckingsucks and Doocy think that it would totally be unfair to ask Sarah Palin too much about it.

Doocy said, "it seems like they're stacking the deck against" Palin by asking too much about foreign policy — not that Gwen Ifill has released her list of questions or anything — and added "the average person is more concerned with domestic stuff than foreign stuff anyway." Presumably he meant "the average person that doesn't have loved ones in imminent danger fighting one of the two wars abroad in which we are currently embroiled." Pfuckingsucks agreed, says " "Exactly! I think the moderator will have some serious questions to answer if they do go so heavily on foreign policy," and defined "heavy" as sixty percent of the questions — which is, as I pointed out, less than the percentage of the Cheney-Edwards debate that centered in foreign policy. I guess it's only fair to focus on foreign policy questions when it's the Democrat without a whole lot of experience.

In much the same way that the Obama-Biden campaign is seeking to lower expectations of Biden by talking Palin up, the McCain-Palin campaign is seeking to mitigate her expected trouncing by blaming Gwen Ifill. They're literally going on the airwaves and trashing Ifill and her journalistic credentials in advance of a single question being asked in the hopes that she won't ask too much about foreign policy and to garner sympathy for Palin if she does. How long do you think until Pfuckingsucks takes to the air again to suggest that Ifill is "in the tank" for Obama because they have so much in common? Tuesday? Wednesday?

McCain Camp to Ifill: Go Easy on Palin [Talking Points Memo]
The Cheney-Edwards Vice Presidential Debate [The Commission on Presidential Debates]
Palin: U.S. Might Have To Go To War With Russia [Chicago Tribune]
McCain Retracts Palin's Pakistan Comments [CNN]
Sarah Palin Meets World Leaders [Huffington Post]
Obama-Biden Camp Hypes Palin’s Debating Skills [CNN]

There's another story about John Edwards in yesterday's Daily News, about how he's been calling former staffers and asking for forgiveness for his tawdry business with Rielle Hunter. When we asked Philip Nobel about his research assistant fucking ways, he asked to be "to be treated as an individual case." And here's the thing with both Edwards and Nobel and many other cheating spouses: they've taken for granted the rights and feelings of another individual, with their public philandering... their wives. Their actions did not take place in a vacuum. And even if I could muster some sympathy for a man trapped in a bad marriage or a marriage that made him unhappy, I can never ever feel bad for someone who has forced another person, willing or not, to deal with it in public. And as the following five stereotypes of cuckolded wives show, the fucked-over wifey will be judged by that public, no matter what she does.

1. The Ball Buster: Of course Bill cheated on Hillary, many said, she was a feminazi who never let the poor man have his way. And anyway, like Elizabeth Edwards, Hillary "allowed" the affair to continue and participated in a cover-up because all she wanted was power in the first place.

2. The Doormat:: Silda Spitzer got a lot of this, especially from other women, who were disgusted that she stood behind Eliot at the press conference after he was caught frequenting prostitutes. They called her "nauseating . . . phony and awful."

3. The Nag: Nobel said that his piece in Elle was about "the burden of being a lightning rod for the fears of women and the resentments of burdened men." The implication there is that all married men, even the ones who are happily married, are burdened by the responsibility placed on them by their nagging harpy wives. Who wouldn't want to ditch all that and run off with a twenty-something! Which brings us to…

4. The Crone: Nobel's preference for firm young flesh is shared by another political philandering John: McCain. McCain left first wife Carol for current wife Cindy, because, as Carol said, "John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does." Even Carol herself has bought into this piece of media claptrap!

5. The Martyr: Those who don't see Silda Spitzer as a doormat probably see her as a martyr — someone's who's keeping the family's life as private as possible so that her three teenage daughters can have some semblance of normalcy in their lives. While this stereotype isn't necessarily negative, I'm sure Spitzer — and the rest of these wives — would much rather not walk down the street and have everyone feeling sorry for them. As Erica Jong said in an impassioned defense of Hillary in the Washington Post earlier this year, "She cannot have enjoyed her husband's playing around. She certainly never condoned it. But he was clever enough for her, he supported her dreams, and they both loved their smart and beautiful daughter. Besides, what does anyone know about anyone else's marriage?"

In Which People Are Atrocious To Elizabeth Edwards And Not Nearly Atrocious Enough To Her Idiot Husband [Radar]
Edwards' Wife Criticized For Silence On Affair [AP via WRAL]
Hillary Vs.The Patriarchy [Washington Post]
John Edwards Calling Former Staffers Asking For Forgiveness [NYDN]

Earlier: Elle Writer "Didn't Plan To Be The Poster Boy For Male Recklessness"
Women On Silda Wall: "I'd Have Paraded In Front Of A Microphone With A Knife"
Oh, About That First Wife

MEGAN: Morning! People has this stupid teaser on its webpage for its cover story on Elizabeth Edwards' feelings told by other people as though people like you and I are going to run out and buy the magazine? I'd be tempted to make an appointment with my acupuncturist who has a description and gets it in the office, which costs a hell of a lot more money but is more useful than a magazine. Anyway, apparently, it hurt to hear that her husband was sticking his penis in other women. Has your curiosity been satiated?

DAVID: I don't feel like I'll have a real handle on the story until Mike Allen at the Politico has interviewed Elizabeth about her Hollywood crushes, though.

MEGAN: I'll be she thinks George Clooney is cute.

DAVID: Well, clearly the lesson from all this is that we shouldn't vote for John Edwards in November. Now, can we move along, people?

MEGAN: Wait, though, can we go back to Rush Limbaugh for a second? Because I think I might be allowed to crush on Keith Olbermann after he went after Rush last night. (Skip to minute 3, if you want to see it.)

DAVID: Oh, sweet. I need to watch that. Olbermann is uneven for me. Sometimes he's awesome and then other times he goes so far over the top. Whereas my love for Rachel Maddow is unconditional and all-consuming.

MEGAN: Yes, I have to agree about Rachel, but, um, Keith could, say, call me in Denver and yell about how awesome smart women are for a while.

DAVID: So, what do you think about Arkansas? Do you feel like the shooting was politically motivated?

MEGAN: I mean, if it wasn't politically motivated, why Gwatney in particular?

DAVID: Most reports I'm seeing are refraining from speculation about motivation, but I have a sinking feeling in my stomach that this is exactly what I was talking about yesterday with the Limbots going insane and lashing out at Librull Amurrka. Of course, the fact that Righty screamer Michelle Malkin felt the need to issue a denial of involvement before the body was even cold speaks volumes to me.

MEGAN: Some Internet troll types think it's another Clinton conspiracy. For real.

DAVID: Conservatism, I am starting to believe, is a form of mental illness. Malkin is up to her old tricks again of publishing the contact information of people who challenge her. If you go down that thread and look, Malkin published some detractor's email address and full name and her commenters are bragging about looking up the guy's mother's name and threatening her.

MEGAN: Hey, you know, that shit got some dudes a NY Times Magazine cover story, so...

DAVID: Delightful people. Funny how much her denial of blame yesterday reminds me of her denial of blame in the death of UC Santa Cruz administrator Denice Denton.

MEGAN: Yes, we get it, Michelle, you are not personally responsible for all the evil in the world, not even the evil committed by your fans. Speaking of pissing off Michelle's fans, did you see that the Census Bureau came out with new figures that say white people won't be the majority by 2042? Interesting timing on that one.

DAVID: Except that she is. But speaking of trolls, did you see Larry King last night? Larry King and Paul Waldman handed Obama-bashing Jerome Corsi's his ass on a pizza.

HA! Segway jinx! Yes, 2042 is when Mark Penn's target voters will no longer be the top dogs. To tell you the truth, I'm a little disappointed because I thought that white people were already outnumbered.

MEGAN: I mean, is it just a little interesting to you that the government comes out with these figures that we've all know for ages now that prompt headlines like White Americans no longer a majority by 2042 a mere 11 days before the start of the first Democratic convention which will make Obama (an African-American) the first major- party candidate for President? Or am I just that paranoid?

DAVID: When it comes to the perfidy of corporate media, I don't think you can ever be too paranoid, can you?

MEGAN: Possibly not.

DAVID: I mean, you've got Karl Rove's buttboy in at the top of the AP, GE owns NBC and MSNBC, then there's ClearChannel and Pox News. Even public radio and television are beholden to big money donors like BP and Wal-Mart.

MEGAN: You know what's really funny?

DAVID: Really, Megan, it's all down to you. You alone can tell the world the Truth. What's funny?

MEGAN: A good friend of mine used to work at Alticor, which owns Amway (which, of course) doesn't advertise AND is heavily Republican... and they complain about the perfidy of the corporate media and the influence of advertising dollars, too.

Aaaanyway, back to topical stuff... Want to talk about how this might be the first convention since 1984 that Jesse Jackson doesn't speak at? Or that he'll watch D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty (kind of a cutie) and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn but not House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel speak (though, the latter might be because he's had a couple of easily-foreseen ethical scandals crop up recently)?

DAVID: Oh, well, I think that might be for the best, don't you? Maybe he has a pressing gig talking about spaying and neutering at a veterinary convention. Honestly, I think it may be time for Reverend Jackson to spend some more time with his families.

MEGAN: I'm actually kind of disappointed in Charlie Rangel. It's like when people in D.C. said, "No one could be a bigger, more condescending prick who abuses the power of his office than Bill Thomas" he took that as a challenge.

DAVID: Everybody needs goals in life. Charlie was just reaching for that rainbow, living the dream. Can we really fault him for that?

MEGAN: Sort of like the owner of the gay cruising site that's maxed out to McCain.

DAVID: Well, I have a theory about that.

MEGAN: Self-loathing? Or straight entrepreneur?

DAVID: Your gay Republican types thrive in an atmosphere of repression and secrecy. They want their gay sex dirty, shameful, and totally secret. They don't want to have stable gay marriages or adopt kids. They want to get down on it Larry Craig style.

MEGAN: And so he thinks in a McCain administration his cruising site will do better? Actually, given McCain's incredibly gay entourage, that might not be too far off the mark.

DAVID: I've thought about this a lot. I never could understand why someone would be a gay Republican. It's like being a chicken for Col. Sanders.

MEGAN: God, reading that just made my stomach growl.

DAVID: But then the more I thought about it, and as more and more and more twisted gay sex scandals came to light in the GOP, I started putting together my Unified Field Theory of Gay Republicans. For them it's all about The Forbidden.

Well, that and racism.

DAVID: Good morning!

MEGAN: Morning! Welcome to my daily routine of crap!

DAVID: Good morning, baby! You know, I'm actually sort of impressed with this Maureen Dowd column. Not that it's actually good or anything, just that for once she managed not to fall back her one Freshman Lit class trick, over-alliteration. It's like that was the one day in English 102 that she bothered to show up for.

MEGAN: Hmm, I found it marginally less annoying than usual, except that she makes fun of Hawaiian culture, uses annoying similes and puts words into people's mouths and outrageous and unlikely thoughts into people's heads:

You can almost hear her mind whirring: She’s amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn’t eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama.

You're right, it's not alliteration, it's internal rhyme and it's not even original! Guess she missed those days of English composition. I have to say, one thing I really hate about this job is the need to read Maureen Dowd. I miss my many years of ignoring her existence, let alone her writing.

DAVID: It's kind of sad, really. She's been dining out on the Clintons for nearly two decades now. Sometimes I feel like she's getting in all her hits now before her meal ticket walks out the door. She's going to wring every last drop from those two that she can. And sometimes I feel like the Times knows it, which is why they still have her behind kind of a half-hearted subscription wall.

MEGAN: I think they quit that, since no one would pay to read her. Man, those were good days, too. When I could claim I wasn't reading her because my boss wouldn't pay for the subscription.

DAVID: You still have to register your email and get a log-in ID to read her column. I know that because the log-in from BugMeNot that I've been using for three years just stopped working, so I had to re-register just now. Now, here's the kind of headline you don't see too much anymore:

Al Qaeda positioned for attacks against West, U.S. analyst says

There. You've covered your ass. Now let's go clear some brush.

MEGAN: Oooh, I feel so 2001, except that no one reported it then and no one in the Administration listened to it!

DAVID: Yee haw! Maybe for old times sake we should saw on the Gary Condit thing for an inordinate amount of time. Oh, no, wait, the WaPo beat us to it.

MEGAN: Anyway, speaking of mistresses, we should probably touch on the Rielle Hunter former friend interview.

DAVID: Her name is "Pigeon"? That's really unfortunate.

MEGAN: Well, and so is the fact that she refrained from being like "Girl, stop boning the married guy and buying his shit and find yourself someone nice that cares about you for real" and Rielle friend-dumped her anyway.

DAVID: This bit is particularly unnerving to me somehow:

I — she's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful person in a very ugly position, and I really feel for her. I think that — I really have never known someone so insistent upon integrity and honesty and openness. It's one of the most beautiful things about her. There are many beautiful things about her.

Nah, I take it back. Actually that part is kind of beautiful.You can really taste the crazy.

MEGAN: Yeah, there are many parts that are probably beautiful about Rielle, her willingness to ignore that Edwards was married and tell all her friends about it and bash his wife to reporters are probably not among them. That said, I'm not sure Rush Limbaugh gets it (heh) either.

It just seems to me that Edwards might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk.

God, don't you love the old "My wife doesn't suck my cock anymore" excuse for infidelity?

DAVID: Well, these people are hardcore New Agers, and something I've found about those people is that they'll do just heinous stuff to other people and then find some way to justify it with a bunch of airy fairy crap about "positivity" and "actualization of my potential". Oh, we really are going to talk about Hellmouth Limbaugh?

MEGAN: Well, we have to bring it up. He basically said guys get tired of fucking mouthy women who, by the way, don't give blow jobs. You know who I don't ever give blow jobs to? Rush Limbaugh. Also, guys that are pigs about it. And guys who beg for it like small children, just because it's unattractive. And anyone who is less than fastidious about cleanliness.

DAVID: Can I get a "Hell, yeah" on that last one? I know there are a lot of people out there who are against circumcision, but in terms of what you're are or aren't going to go down on, ultimately, I think I'm in the pro-circumcision camp. See? I'm willing to totally range into Deep Overshare territory to not have to think too hard about Rush Limbaugh.

MEGAN: Or his penis. Or the women he might have to pay to suck his penis, just so's he knows it's still there, since he can't really reach it around his stomach to jerk off anymore, which is why he bloviates the way he does. His show is the closest thing to self-fellating he's able to achieve.

DAVID: This is the thing that kind of keeps me up at night. We may get a Democratic Congress and president in 2009, but you know, I live in Georgia (and things have been much better since the cease-fire, thanks fer askin'!) and I see all those angry, red-faced white guys in their Escalades and Dodge Rams who listen to him. They're not going anywhere. It makes me think about Oklahoma City and that guy who charged into that Unitarian church and started shooting.

MEGAN: See, the only time I really see those people is in bars back home. They seem less angry then. Sometimes they hit on me.

DAVID: Hellmouth Limbaugh has been stoking those people's ids for, well, about as long as Maureen Dowd has been working toward the same ends from the Upper West Side. His listeners are genuinely scary true believers. At least around here they are.

MEGAN: When I used to leave my house during the day and go to a real job, I used to hear cab drivers listening to Limbaugh during the day. Amusingly, 99% of his cabbie listeners in my anecdotal survey were immigrants. I never did figure out if they were listening because they believed, or to better know the enemy. Or because it was a Republican town and they worked for tips.

DAVID: My guess would be the latter, but I guess you never really know. I can't really think about Limbaugh without thinking about pilonidal cysts.

MEGAN: I had a friend with those. Don't Google, people, whatever you do.

DAVID:

A pilonidal cyst is a cyst at the bottom of the tailbone (coccyx) that can become infected and filled with pus. Once infected, the technical term is pilonidal abscess. Pilonidal abscesses look like a large pimple at the bottom of the tailbone, just above the crack of the buttocks. It is more common in men than in women. It usually happens in young people up into the fourth decade of life.

Hey, there's a reason to be happy about turning 40!

Oh, heh, I just saw your Do Not Google advice. Enjoy your breakfast, Jezebelles!

MEGAN: Ok, given the absence of news other than the fact that I was right about Edwards' timing issues with his story and the halt to military action in Georgia, perhaps we can dissect The Atlantic's piece on Hillary's campaign based on all the email and memo traffic.

SPENCER: You know, nothing incoming but the reggae drumming. Yeah I did what you should always do after getting the shit kicked out of you at a Rancid show you're too old to be at: read a Tolstoyesque campaign post-mortem at 2 am.

MEGAN: (I hereby highly recommend that everyone take a moment and click through and read that link, by the way, as it's a piece of very excellent writing by Spencer. We'll wait.)
You were much more productive than I. I just came home and went to bed.

SPENCER: When I was I guess 8 I remember skinning my knee really badly and seeing a bunch of goo pus up past my shredded skin. For whatever reason — like a science experiment, I guess — I figured that more goo would emerge if I split the skin further, and sure enough I was right. Now that was fascinating — weird viscosity, unfamiliar color, surprising heat. I've never seen anything like it until I read this Josh Green piece about Hillary.

So point one: Mark Penn. Complex figure after all!

MEGAN: Oh, man, I'm about to just give up and let you right. You obviously beat me to coffee-drinking, not that my stomach can handle it after that mental image.

SPENCER: Red Bull not coffee. Carbona not glue.

MEGAN: Yes, Mark Penn: not the biggest problem! I was amazed.

SPENCER: Anyway Mark Penn. Actually worse than you thought. Get a load of how he assesses Obama's promise to America:

Save it for 2050.

MEGAN: Well, except that he elbowed everyone out of the way and ignored chain of command and basically acted like he was fighting his colleagues.

SPENCER: Holy shit dude! It actually gets worse.

MEGAN: You know what amazed me?

SPENCER: This?

Listening to Brit Hume say that Obama is surging while Hillary failed to do X is almost comical and certainly transparent. The right knows Obama is unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun, and a third party would come in then anyway.

MEGAN: No, but that's pretty stunning, too. My point is far geekier than that:

Though Penn was “chief strategist,” he was a paid contractor, and thus barred from most targeting and budget planning.

Which means, in effect, that Penn spent 90% of his time trying elbow people out of the way that he couldn't even replace unless he gave up or took a leave of absence from his other very lucrative job, which he didn't want to do.

SPENCER: HAHAHAHA I am trying to write about this very issue in an Iraq context. Ray Odierno, who next month will be the U.S. commander in Baghdad, implies that he's going to carry out Petraeus' same population-protection strategy except with... 30,000 fewer troops. YOU CANNOT STRATEGIZE IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND/CONTROL YOUR RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS. You know what you get if you do?

MEGAN: So rather than acknowledge the lesser role that was BY LAW required to play, he let her fill those spots with actual people and then fought and undermined them every step of the way.

SPENCER:

Ickes seemed attuned to the asymmetric risk that accompanies overwhelming front-runner status: the collapse of momentum that would accompany an unexpected loss. He posited that Edwards and Obama could sustain losing Iowa and New Hampshire but worried that Clinton could not; he urged that she spend “substantial” time in Iowa; and he recommended a contingency plan that would haunt the campaign when his own budget team didn’t fulfill it. Noting the difficulty of raising more than $75 million before Iowa, Ickes stressed the need to maintain a $25 million reserve, presumably as insurance against a setback. The campaign wound up raising more than $100 million—but, according to The New York Times, by the time Iowa was lost, $106 million had been spent. The $25 million reserve had vanished, and the campaign was effectively insolvent.

MEGAN: But, it never really hits on who spent that money. That was always my question.Or did I miss it with my sleep-filled eyes?

SPENCER: But this is the thing I wanted to note about Penn: Josh is really good at pointing out that more than anyone else, Penn actually understood Clinton's path to the nomination: women, lower/middle class voters, self-ID'd Democrats.

If we double perform with WOMEN, LOWER AND MIDDLE CLASS VOTERS, then we have about 55% of the voters.
The reason the Invisible Americans is so powerful is that it speaks to exactly how you can be a champion for those in needs [sic]. He may be the JFK in the race [He means Obama — Spencer], but you are the Bobby.

That right there was 100 percent correct. I got the feeling in the piece that Josh was actually sort of convinced that Penn actually did think more strategically than the rest of the team.

MEGAN: Oh, totally, I think the problem was getting them all at the same time. I would give Penn more props if it had been the plan to target women and then swing back around to get the lower- and middle-class men. But it doesn't seem like it was. The strategy that got women to vote for her was one he opposed. Can we say that Mark Penn doesn't "get" women?

SPENCER: Well actually let me amend that: he had the best 30,000-foot-altitude vision, but he — and the rest of the campaign — evinced an absolute blind spot toward the basic facts of how to win a protracted nomination battle (ie, win the most delegates)... I really want to make another Iraq analogy but I will resist temptation!

MEGAN: Oh, yeah, also, I loved the Ickes memo on delegates, from December 22, 2007.

SPENCER: YES PLEASE talk about that. What struck you about Mark Penn thinking about women as an odd and unfamiliar abstraction?

MEGAN: I mean, it seemed to me his entire strategy on women was to gin us all up with the idea that her campaign was breaking barriers!(TM) and then go on to getting men's votes as though women didn't care about issues and whatever. Which, sure, some of us don't and were indeed all ginned up for a barrier-breaking woman President, but not a 2-to-1 margin of us like Penn was expecting. Plus, Penn's actual strategy was not to emphasize her female-ness, but just rely on women to recognize that a woman candidate breaks barriers while he campaigned for the other vote.

1) Start with a base of women.
a. For these women you represent a breaking of barriers
b. The winnowing out of the most competent and qualified in an unfair, male dominated world
c. The infusion of a woman and a mother’s sensibilities into a world of war and neglect

Start with a base of women how exactly?

SPENCER: Like a binding ingredient! Crush pine nuts and Nilla wafers in a food processor, then pour 1/2 a stick of clarified butter to bind; spread over a pie tin and bake at 350...

MEGAN: It isn't until he gets to talking about men that he talks about issues. He strategy of women is that OF COURSE there's some of us that will vote for a woman no matter what and then quietly sexism-bait us and put a pink ribbon on war policy and then turn to the boys and talk about serious issues.

SPENCER: Really, though, her lifetime of work gives her a base of women, doesn't it? I don't really see why that was wrong — but it definitely — and this is a huge irony — indicates that HRC could have... taken women's issues for granted!

You don't think she talked about equal pay and reproductive issues and health care and things that are typically thought of as women's issues, although of course all issues are women's issues and stop glowering at me like that...

MEGAN: But he's talking about getting 3-to-1 margins with women voters. She doesn't have a 3-to-1 margin because of her lifetime of work.

SPENCER: Good point.

MEGAN: Of course, Penn lists health care as an issue to talk to the men about, which fundamentally misunderstands the role that women play as purchasers in the health case system.

SPENCER: And all the more to your point. Let's talk about the Equality/Sexism non-speech!

SPENCER:

In the aftermath of Obama’s historic race speech on March 18, Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas congresswoman, urged Clinton to deliver a speech of her own on gender. Clinton appeared very much to want to do this, and solicited the advice of her staff, which characteristically split. The campaign went back and forth for weeks. Opponents argued that her oratory couldn’t possibly match Obama’s, and proponents countered that she would get credit simply for trying, inspire legions of women to her cause, and highlight an issue that everyone in the campaign fiercely believed was hurting them—sexism. But Clinton never made a decision...

MEGAN: Yes, the non-speech. The one all the women Penn wanted on board wanted her to give but she never gave because she already had their support and didn't have to.

SPENCER: Megan, should she have made the speech? To put this as delicately as I can, playing off the deep deep desires of women for a woman president was a very good strategy for Clinton, except that it had to be combined with an actual ability to overtake the delegate lead Obama amassed, and that never happened.

MEGAN: I don't think she should've made it in response to Obama's speech. Barring a hook, a specific instance of major sexism to with to tie the speech, I think it would've looked like a tit-for-tat. But I think after New Hampshire, before Obama's race speech, then would've been a good time to speak out AND it might have produced tangible consequences.

SPENCER: Yeah I'm with you on that — imagine if she went right from the crying/NH victory and said fuck this, you know what's not fair about the way women in this country are treated? let me count the ways...

MEGAN: Right, that would've been awesome. But I mean, after March 18th was Pennsylvania at the end of April, which (you'll recall, since we were there) she won anyway. I don't think it would've moved the needle in North Carolina or even in Indiana by much, possibly in Oregon but not in Kentucky.

SPENCER: Whoa look at you, Chuck Todd. I'll leave the whiteboard stuff to you.

MEGAN: Sorry, but that's the truth. For her overall political career, for her legacy, yes, I would've wanted her to give the speech. But after March 18th, and I hate to side with Mark fucking Penn, but he was right on this. It wouldn't've done her any good.

SPENCER: You know what's missing from this piece? Any discussion — aside from a cursory graf — that the reason why she lost was her Iraq vote.

MEGAN: Yeah, it's like that only mattered in Iowa. Um, no. Only, and New Yorkers keep saying this, she might not have won re-election in 2006. I don't necessarily buy that, especially given the way the Republican party self-destructed in that race, but that wasn't foreseeable.

SPENCER: if she voted against the war, Obama would have practically no traction and she would have kicked the shit out of Edwards. And, uh, speaking of kicking the shit out of Edwards, you HAVE to check out this looney-tunes column from Sally Quinn. Just read the first graf (that's all I read).

SPENCER:

I just want to smack him across the puss, as my Savannah-born mother used to say. I want to smack him across that pretty puss, those pretty eyelashes, that pretty hair. I want to shake him and knock his pretty head against the wall.

How many psychological tics can you count? The two "puss" references? The battered-husband fantasy? GODDAMN IT BEN BRADLEE LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO! YOU'RE SO FUCKING STUPID BABY AND I LOVE YOU SO MUCH AND WHEN ARE YOU JUST GOING TO FUCKING LISTEN TO ME.

MEGAN: The blaming the wife? I love how, obviously, Edwards told her the whole truth and nothing but. Because that's when men do, when caught out there, they don't mitigate AT ALL.

SPENCER: Okay, that's all I have to say.

MEGAN: Wait, before we go, we can totally tie that back into Hillary! Because where have we heard this kind of rhetoric before?

SPENCER: Where have we heard it?

MEGAN:

Not only did she allow him to run, exposing herself and her children to the pain and humiliation that would inevitably come, she could have allowed him to destroy the Democratic party in the process. This man was running for the President of the United States on a lie and she knew it. If he had not entered the race it could have changed the outcome of the primary. And what if he had won the primary? Think of the people they betrayed — yes, THEY. They betrayed their devoted staff, the supporters who sent in millions of dollars, the taxpayers who supplied Secret Service protection (I want my money back) , their party and their country. She stood by and let him lie and lie and lie.

Oh, wait, this was the same shit the Right spewed at Hillary.

SPENCER: Really a shame she never made that sexism speech. HRC: It's not too late.

• John McCain is in the midst of a two-day sweep through Pennsylvania with former governor Tom Ridge, who was the first-ever Secretary of Homeland Security, igniting speculation that he'll be McCain's choice for the Veep slot. You might as well just take your shoes off now and leave them off until 2012. [CNN, CNN]
• Actually, never mind. Wear whatever shoes you want, bring your water bottles to the airport and don't worry if you're a minority or a Muslim or anything: President Bush says we don't have any problems. [Think Progress]
• Howard Wolfson says Clinton would've won if Edwards had dropped out because of his problem keeping Little Eddie sheathed in his drawers. Only, you know, probably not. But she definitely would've been if Howard had stopped wearing that ugly sweater. [Newser, HuffPo]

• Clinton will headline the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night — the 88th Anniversary of women receiving the right to vote. That means, if you didn't know, she won't be the VP nominee. [Washington Post]
• The Russians are dividing and conquering Georgia pretty effectively today. That part where they said they wouldn't enter Georgia territory? A total lie, of course. [Associated Press]
• The FBI was reading the emails of reporters for the Washington Post and New York Times without warrants or probably cause or anything. Luckily, mine are so boring the FBI wouldn't bother. [Washington Independent]
• That Preppie Killer guy is headed back to prison for dealing coke because [cue world's smallest violins] he couldn't find a way to support himself after he got out of prison for killing a woman. [CNN]

Fully accepting Edwards' version of the time line of events, Bonnie places the blame for his candidacy on Elizabeth:

The bigger question is "why did Elizabeth Edwards drink her husband's Kool-Aid? How could she have possibly believed that her husbands affair would remain a private matter when he was running for President of the United States? Hello, the National Enquirer had already broken the story last fall. Why in fact, did she knowingly encourage her spouse to even enter the campaign when she had been fully informed about the affair for over a year? And she helped support and propagate John Edwards' image as a devoted husband and family man.

Actually, let's dispense with the problem with Bonnie's facts first. John and Elizabeth say that she was told "sometime" in 2006; Edwards threw his hat in the ring on December 28, 2006 (the same week Rielle Hunter was quoted talking about her documentaries in Newsweek). Elizabeth was, however, no where to be seen in any of the photographs or press reports. The first documented incidence I can find of them together was on January 14, 2007 when Edwards gave a speech for MLK Day, followed by a campaign event on January 20, 2007 — more than a month after the official announcement (and long after the decision had been made). Frankly, at the point at which John Edwards was contracting with Rielle Hunter to make documentaries of him in Summer 2006 — mistress or not — the decision for him to run for President had obviously long been made. So, she'd hardly been "fully informed about the affair for over a year" when she encouraged him to run — assuming, in fact, that' she's "fully" informed now.

That aside, there are plenty of reasons Elizabeth might well have assumed John's indiscretion might never come out. Anyone in Washington can tell you that plenty of men cheat on their wives in this town and no one ever says a word. If John told her, as it seems he is telling us, that he had a "brief" indiscretion with a staffer, that's a lot different than a long-term torrid affair and far less likely to become public. Elizabeth, by all accounts, has sacrificed a lot for John's political career and is as committed to his political goals (poverty eradication, universal health care, etc.) as he is. So maybe once she got over her grief and anger, once she made the decision to stay with him, maybe she convinced herself that no one else would ever have to know about her humiliation. Goodness knows that's not the first time that such a thing has come to pass. And looking at the race, and her husband and her political ideals, maybe it wasn't such a stretch to believe that a one-night stand wouldn't make the papers. Most politicians' don't.

The second point to consider is whether his indiscretions make him a bad father (in Fuller-speak, "family man"). Not that I wouldn't rage to the high heavens if I discovered my father had been unfaithful to my mother, but that would have almost no bearing on whether he was a good father to me or not. That's not to say whether John Edwards is or not — he might well not be and, if Rielle's child is his, I would guess that the general consensus would be he's not — but what he did or did not do with his penis on the side aren't the determining factor in that by a long shot.

Fuller's main point is this:

Well, she may not want to admit it but Elizabeth is as guilty as her husband at this point, in inviting the public into her family's personal life.

What evidence Fuller has for that is unclear. Because she stood by his side? Because she did what you do when your spouse is running for office? Standing next to him at a rally, or giving a speech, or sitting for an interview is tantamount to letting the press into your bedroom or the inner workings of your marriage? While I have no doubt that Fuller, the former editor of Star Magazine and US Weekly, repeated that to herself in the mirror every morning before heading to the office to scroll through paparazzi photographs to use in her next poorly-sourced, sometimes mean-spirited celebrity-gossip-filled issue, that doesn't make it, you know, actually true. I don't want Bonnie Fuller's minions in my closet at night any more than I want George Bush's.

Basically, Elizabeth Edwards forgave her husband and, by her own admission, wanted to be spared public humiliation so she didn't run through the streets telling everyone her husband had an affair. She began to try to make her own peace with it in her own way, and at the same time recognized that, in terms of policy issues, she still thought her husband was the best candidate for President and supported him. How terrible of her. While I disagree with her assertion that her husband's actions in the affair — especially given the timing, the money he paid Rielle to work for him, the kid, the shady antics involved in paying both her and Andrew Young to leave North Carolina and the possibility that he has continued to lie about it — should not be subject to public scrutiny, I don't think she bears any responsibility for his actions or her desire and willingness to continue to support him. He is the villain here, at least in terms of his marriage and the affair and its effect on his political career — not her. And slapping blame on her for convincing herself that her private humiliation might remain private is just ugly and unwarranted.

Today [Daily Kos]
Elizabeth Edwards Drank Her Husband's Kool-Aid And Became His "Ambition Enabler" [HuffPo]
Politics 2008: John Edwards, Untucked [Newsweek]

MEGAN: Morning! Shall we get right down to analyzing the whole Edwards debacle?

SPENCER: I just wanted to say I went an entire weekend without fathering any illegitimate children OR vindicating Mickey Kaus.

MEGAN: Hey, and I haven't gotten knocked up either, so, congrats to both of us!

SPENCER: But this changes nothing. Mickey Kaus, now and forever, snacks on goat penis.

MEGAN: Well, I mean, he said it was really tasty.

SPENCER: So, you said in your post Friday that Edwards can't be Attorney General, which disappoints me tremendously. Do you think Elizabeth can launch her own political career? She's in remission, right?

MEGAN: Actually, I don't think she's in remission. She's incurable, so it's still going, sadly. I would've rather have seen Elizabeth's stellar political career. Rewind? I mean, the biggest problem is that paternity isn't going to be resolved. Rielle's not going to allow a DNA test, so everyone will continue to suspect it's his kid as I already do.

SPENCER: You saw her dKos diary, yeah? She wrote this like a pro:

John has spoken in a long on-camera interview I hope you watch. Admitting one’s mistakes is a hard thing for anyone to do, and I am proud of the courage John showed by his honesty in the face of shame.

I started singing the Ramones' "Swallow My Pride" to myself when I read this. and also "Swallow Goat Cock" By Kaus and the Goatees.

MEGAN: Which, I'm sorry, totally negates the whole "I asked her not to come on camera" bullshit Edwards pulled on Friday to appeal to us ladies.

SPENCER: He did what now?

MEGAN: On Friday, in his interview, Edwards told Woodruff that he not only didn't ask Elizabeth to appear with him but asked her not to, in effect saying he didn't want to be Spitzer, McGreevey or Craig, getting lambasted for having his wife by his side while admitting to this shit. BUT he had her talk to Bob Schieffer on the phone (sobbing, according to Schieffer) to confirm the 2006 version of events and then she did the thing on Kos.

So, I'm sorry, we don't have the visual, but I don't think he's a better guy. Also, as I said in my piece on Friday, I think he's lying on the timing and nothing I've read since does anything to disabuse me of that notion.

SPENCER: Well shit. But here's something else: in liberal circles in 2007, the drunken chatter was that Edwards didn't want to run for president, but Elizabeth, facing the clarifying prospect of her own mortality, wanted him to. Sounded plausible at the time! He had no chance of getting the nomination as soon as Obama jumped in, and possibly none before. But but but but BUT how could Elizabeth have known he slept with Rielle Hunter and then said "Fuck it, Johnny. You should still be president!"

MEGAN: I'm guessing that was just a story he put out there to look like less of a shitty husband for continuing to run while his wife had cancer. I'm sure she was supportive, but there was no firm indication that she'd live until the 2009 Inauguration when she was first diagnosed.

So, maybe seeing him as President was her semi-dying wish, maybe she'd internalized his desires to that degree that she thought it was, but it sounds to me like a pretty campaign fairy tale intended to make us believe in the John-and-Liz as a team thing. Anyway, back to why I'm sticking by my suspicions that he's still lying: Sam Stein thinks he is, too, and he's got even more evidence about when John and Rielle met, and when she got hired. And the Updated Newsweek story about how Rielle was indeed still going around claiming to be having an affair with someone the reporter knew (which, he didn't know Andrew Young) in January, which is the blind item Page Six had in January 06 as well.

SPENCER: Here's where I get exhausted with the story. OK OK he fucked her, might have fathered an illegitimate child, career's come to an end, it's DONE right? Does it matter if he's lying to the public if he's not going to be a public official anymore? At what point do we say enough, he's out of politics. I say right now!

MEGAN: Oh, you know me, I'm the type of person who hates to let that shit go. But on to new topics, then! Like the leaked Clintonian emails. Damn, I hate when shit makes Mark Penn look less incredibly wrong. Can't we just stick to mocking the chapter of his book about appealing to American snipers?

SPENCER: Let's chew on this a moment:

Penn, the presidential campaign’s chief strategist, wrote in a memo to Clinton excerpted in the article: “I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.”

MEGAN: George Bush in 08?

SPENCER: ... and so begins the header on a million GOP/McCain fundraising emails.

MEGAN: I mean, really, at this point, Penn ought to be getting fucking royalties from McCain's campaign.

SPENCER: so, congratulations, black people! Remember how you thought whites don't see you as American? Mark Penn just confirmed it. You are officially off the hook for the Iraq war.

MEGAN: Wait, according to Virginia Congressman Jim Moran it was all the Jews' fault anyway.

SPENCER: I'm curious to see in Josh's story what the Clinton machine's reaction to that memo was — whether that launched the Wright-based whisper campaign or whether the Clintonites rejected it. Yeah yeah that shit. But really — if that memo was ignored/repudiated, it's one thing. If it was ACTED UPON that is quite another.

MEGAN: Do you think that whether the Clintonistas put the Obama in Somali gear photo out there will be in there?

SPENCER: Mike "who's your celebrity crush" Allen says the Penn memo was 3/30/08 so I think that post-date Somalibama but NOT some of the Wright stuff.

MEGAN: I think this much was acted upon:

Every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America American to the middle class in the middle of the last century. And talk about the basic bargain as about the deeply American values you grew up with, learned as a child and that drive you today. Values of fairness, compassion, responsibility, giving back

Which, really, means Penn should pay royalties to Karl Rove.

SPENCER: Except Rove wins elections
MEGAN: What his lackeys will do with John McCain is another question.

SPENCER: ... ok back to Edwards for one second: can he really not be attorney general? He had such balls! He was going to be the leftwing John Ashcroft, fucking with the right just to fuck with them! The mailed fist in Obama's politics-of-hope-and-reconciliation velvet glove? Really? I have to give up the dream? The dream of indictments for torture and rendition and US attorney firings and warrantless surveillance? What if he just says the kid is mine? The Democrats are going to have 57 fucking Senate seats!

MEGAN: I really don't think he can be. Can you imagine those confirmation hearings? Especially if it turns out he was still lying? If he used donor money to pay his mistress (let alone hush up his mistress)? Did you check the Baron angle — that's Edwards' finance chair who paid both Rielle and Andrew Young and his wife and kids to get the fuck out of North Carolina but says he didn't get the money from Edwards or the campaign? Oh, right, and this:

The associate, who asked not to be identified, said Mr. Young has privately made conflicting statements about the extent of his relationship with Ms. Hunter and whether he is the child’s father.

Like, all of that, up for review, in the confirmation hearing for the guy who's supposed to play gotcha with the Bushies? I think you need to get yourself a new legal pitbull, as do I.

SPENCER: BUT GODDAMN IT i need to see someone go to jail on this shit. I guess if you're Obama you want to be light years away from Edwards' cocktrouble, but if he doesn't appoint a real left-wing SOB for AG I will be sorely disappointed. Now I feel fucked by John Edwards. Hopefully I remain unpregnant.

MEGAN: Well, how much would you sorta like to see, um, Bill Clinton in that role. If the Dems get 60 in the Senate.

SPENCER: Well, not if he acquiesced to that Penn memo!

MEGAN: Can you imagine Bill Clinton with subpoena power? His bar membership's been reinstated.

SPENCER: and that's a confirmation hearing you relish?

MEGAN: Hey, I said if they get to 60.

SPENCER: actually on second thought, it would be awesome to see Clinton-as-pugilist putting it back on, say, Inhofe or Sessions.

MEGAN: I'm just enjoying the thought of Bill Clinton with the power to investigate the dirty laundry of those that investigated his blowjobs, because you know there is worse than a couple of intern beejes going on in Washington.

SPENCER: But speaking of going back: the right-wing veterans organization Vets For Freedom are sending right-wing Iraq vets to embed in Iraq. and you know what? I have absolutely no problem with this.

MEGAN: Really? That the Weekly Standard and the National Review are putting a bunch of right-wing non-jouno partisan hacks on the masthead for the purpose of war promotion and we're footing the bill? Please explain.

SPENCER: That "we're footing the bill" bullshit applies to ALL EMBEDS.

MEGAN: Yes, which I'm fine with when their stated purpose is not to promote the war and elect John McCain.

SPENCER: Like, you paid for my trip to Baghdad & Mosul last year, and I reported from a liberal perspective. That's structurally indistinguishable from what the VFF ppl are doing.

MEGAN: Except you're an actual reporter.

SPENCER: It's not something the Pentagon is in the business of stopping. You'd rather not live in a world where the Pentagon starts deciding who is and who isn't a reporter.

MEGAN: No, you're right, I just wonder why the WS and the NR can't find actual reporters to go. Is there a word for that?

SPENCER: A bunch of antiwar bloggers have embedded as well. The embed program is open, and in terms of the "harm" they do, only the 27 Percenters who still back Bush would read this shit anyway.

MEGAN: Chiiiickenhawk or something?

SPENCER: No, I doubt that, I just think the Standard & NRO know a gimmick when they see one, and think that it'll be harder for leftwing antiwarriors to attack pieces written by vets. and to that, I must quote Beyonce: "they must not know 'bout me, they must not know 'bout me." but, look, you know, the game is the game, and let's see how they play it.

MEGAN: I am happy to attack pieces written by vets. Heck, I've gotten into no less than two ugly political arguments with veteran friends of mine and finally threw up my hands and said, "If you want to buy what they're selling, rationality and actual facts aren't going to convince you, so don't ever ask me questions again."

SPENCER: Also, speaking of BALLING, everybody note that my roommate and homie Matt Yglesias launched his new ThinkProgress blog today!

MEGAN: Congrats to him! Should we talk about that little war thing that started this weekend? I hear, by the way, that anything good about Russian cuisine comes from Georgia.

SPENCER: I dunno. I make a kickass borscht.

MEGAN: Georgian wine is definitely better, not that it's not virtually impossible to come by here.

SPENCER: So yeah while I was driving for an internet-free weekend in State College, PA Russia attacked Georgia or something? I should know about this shit so enlighten me.

MEGAN: Well, so, Georgia went into the disputed territory of South Ossetia where the citizens apparently want to go back to being Russian, so the Russians moved in. And because they're the Russian military, they routed the Georgians. Now they're bombing the capital of Tbilisi and sending ground forces to Gori, which is in Georgia proper, about which one diplomat said, "They seem to have gone beyond the logical stopping point."

SPENCER: Also LOL my friend Benny's band is on the cover of the new Kerrang!

MEGAN: Man, your friends are sort of kicking ass today. They're like the Russians of pop culture.

SPENCER: Yeah so that sucks and we should set to work on the diplomatic course of getting the UN Security Council to turn back the invasion and restore the status quo ante.

MEGAN: Yeah, that's sort of what the Georgians think only you know who sits on the Security Council?

SPENCER: Yeah yeah.

MEGAN: That's why the UN has been so effective in Chechnya. And you know we aren't going to do it because Bush is hard at work at the Summer Olympics and he's seen into Putin's soul.

SPENCER: You know what sets a really bad precedent? Invading other countries while circumventing the UN Security Council. I mean call me crazy!
MEGAN: Well, right, and that. The Security Council basically functions as a rubber stamp for the foreign policies of its members.

SPENCER: Next he'll look into Rielle Hunter's vagina.

• Megan got some airtime with feminist grand dame Gloria Steinem and we were all a little awestruck.
• We suspect that Ms. Steinem would not approve of John Edwards' wandering willie.
• You know what else she's probs over? The annoyingly quirky and underwritten Manic Pixie Dream Girls littering movies today.
• However, she might like Mad Men's sassy, gorgeous Joan Holloway.

• What would the gross sexist dudes in the Mad Men office think of Erin Andrews' controversial outfit? Nothing good. Ugh.
• Maury tortured some poor lady with cotton balls. So that happened.
• We hung out with admitted Mathlete Danica McKellar.
• The Prodge Run Olympics challenge was cray cray!!
• And speaking of the Olympics, they began today. So remember these lady Olympians to watch and tube out with some amazing athletes. It's Friday!

Edwards reportedly hired Hunter in 2006 to produce a series of films about his candidacy before he was actually a candidate — after meeting her in a bar. She didn't exactly have a lot of video production experience. By last September, the videos were scrubbed from the website, and more salacious rumors about him began making the rounds. In December, the National Enquirer came out with its first story that Rielle Hunter was pregnant and that she and Young were claiming to have had the affair. But in January, Page Six published a blind item that, in retrospect, indicates that she was claiming to still be having an affair with Edwards. Rielle's daughter was born February 27, 2008, placing the child's conception around April 2007.

The videos Hunter made for Edwards (and about which she was quoted) were released around New Year's 2006. Is it possible that the affair ended in 2006 while she was still giving press quotes? And that he'd, as he says now, already told Elizabeth? No one noticed the videos were scrubbed until last summer 2007, which is about the time Hunter would've been discovering she was pregnant (and telling people, and showing).

Elizabeth Edwards, by the way, announced that her cancer had come out of remission in March 2007 — about a month before Rielle would've gotten pregnant, supposedly by Andrew Young.

Frankly, I think Edwards is still lying. No one wants to believe he was having sex with a woman he'd hired to work for his campaign, or that he was doing so after his wife announced that she had cancer, so few people are going to question the timing. The story that he cracked Elizabeth's ribs "hugging" her (with the innuendo being while they were having sex) last winter and that's how they discovered the cancer seems a little more... unseemly now, doesn't it? Were they having make-up sex? Or was he still sleeping with his (soon-to-be immunocomprised) wife while having condomless sex with his mistress who he didn't even love?

John Edwards' political appeal relied on a couple of things: his ability to get $400 haircuts while relatively convincingly playing the son-of-a-mill-worker concerned with economic inequality in America; and his ability to be a very attractive politician with a lovely but considered by some to be less-attractive wife with whom he seemed to have a healthy and affectionate relationship. What does he have now? A hippie pregnant mistress from whom, if she openly claims it's his child, he'll demand a paternity test? A mistress that he was (knowingly or not) "sharing" with his staffers while his wife was developing cancer? There's no way to come out ahead of this story, and prevaricating on the timing doesn't help.

There's no way an Obama Administration can nominate him as AG, let alone appoint him to anything that requires Congressional approval. This is the end of the line for John Edwards and his political career, and it should be. Keeping your dick in your pants doesn't require training, just a brain.

Edwards Admits Sexual Affair; Lied as Presidential Candidate [ABC News]
Did John Edwards Sleep With This Lady? [Wonkette]
Enquirer Reports: Rielle with Someone’s Child [Updated] [Wonkette]
Edwards Mystery: Innocuous Videos Suddenly Shrouded In Secrecy [HuffPo]
Scrubbed: Edwards Filmmaker's Deleted Website Raises Questions [HuffPo]
Just Asking [Page Six]
Birth Certificate Of Child Linked To Edwards Lists No Father [McClatchy]
Politics 2008: John Edwards, Untucked [Newsweek]
Elizabeth Edwards's Cancer Returns – but Campaign Goes on [People]
Can We Talk Politics, Please? [NY Times]

• Victoria Osteen, wife of megachurch pastor Joel Osteen, is in court today facing a lawsuit that her "on-board temper tantrum caused the [flight attendant Sharon Brown] to lose her religious faith and suffer a flare-up of hemorrhoids." Osteen was reportedly trying to get a spill on her first-class armrest wiped up and elbowed Brown on the way to the cockpit to complain. The Osteens have already paid a $3,000 FAA fine for interfering with a flight crew. [WorldNet Daily, HuffPo]
• In other salacious news, the National Enquirer has finally gotten around to posting its pictures of John Edwards' Beverly Hilton romp. Hey, did anyone notice that he's not wearing the same clothes in the pictures they said he was wearing? That's weird, right? [National Enquirer, Glamocracy]

• The government came out with almost all of its evidence against Bruce Ivins, the anthrax scientist who killed himself as the FBI were preparing to arrest him. It seems pretty cut and dried — including the part where he misled investigators by telling them the anthrax belonged to an unnamed "other scientist" in the lab. Guess Moe and I were right. [Washington Post]
• In China news, President Bush today said that "America stands in firm opposition to China's detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates, and religious activists." Of course, he then said that they'll get to actual freedom through free trade, so it's China-policy-as-usual. [MSNBC]
• John McCain seemingly has his own Norman Hsu, as the media investigates Harry Sargeant III's large-dollar bundled from unregistered voters and first-time contributors. Corrections to the story, by the way, are already available. [Washington Post]
• A U.S. military tribunal convicted its first person — Osama bin Laden's driver Salim Hamden — of driving bin Laden but not of engaging in terrorism. It apparently means we'll be keeping him in prison for life instead of killing him, and that the military is going to keep on keepin' on with their Alternative-to-Justice Department. [Washington Post]

MOE: Yo, sorry, I have been working on this freelance piece that is disrupting my normal function. I haven't looked at Drudge in a good 24 hours. I just felt so undernourished I bought a Starbucks Vivanno. WHOA what the fuck???

MEGAN: I know, I saw that! What's even worse is that he was a colleague of the guy the FBI totally thought did it and leaked to the press about and finally had to declare innocent and pay millions of dollars to. Kinda makes you wonder what his motives were, right?

Also, his little escapades contaminated half the building, which he totally tested off-the-record and in secret.

MOE: Yeah, Hatfill. Hatfill, who that Vanity Fair linguist pegged.

MEGAN: Well, the FBI pegged him to everyone.

MOE: Right. My mind is still blown here.

After the government's settlement with Hatfill was announced in late June, Ivins started showing signs of strain, the Times said. It quoted a longtime colleague as saying Ivins was being treated for depression and indicated to a therapist that he was considering suicide. Family members and local police escorted Ivins away from the Army lab, and his access to sensitive areas was curtailed, the colleague told the newspaper. He said Ivins was facing a forced retirement in September.

MEGAN: I dunno, the subtext there is that he did it as much to frame Hatfill as anything else, right? Am I just being too suspicious?

MOE: So the whole thing where IT HAS TO BE HATFILL BECAUSE HE WENT TO SCHOOL NEAR A RHODESIAN TOWN CALLED GREENDALE... apparently not! Do you think he just hated Hatfill? This is seriously the most awesome twist to a seriously awesome story. As you can tell, I am at a loss for words. Will you do the intro today?

MEGAN: Sure. And I'm just going to throw this in there even though no one but me and Charlotte Corday probably care, but the wife of the former Prime Minister of Thailand that the military deposed in a coup whose supporters still run the post-military government was convicted of tax evasion yesterday. But none of their supporters particularly care and that's sort of why it's bad to depose a Democratically elected government in a coup and then go after all the corrupt people because she may have not paid her taxes BUT YOU PUT TANKS IN THE STREETS.

Also, I miss my lobbying days this morning. The one time I went to a Chamber afterparty (with Alex Pareene!), I had to pay my own bar tab but I did share a cab to my neighborhood with some random guy that I thought drunkenly was part of the group and wasn't but he was really hot.

MOE: Um, yeah, I don't know what to say about Thaksin, really, can we stay on task here? The Thai military might have put tanks in the street over THERE, but they also let elephants run free and never even got a cool colonial name like Rhodesia. This guy killed like 6 AMERICANS, MOST OF WHOM WORKED FOR THE POSTAL SERVICE. And rendered every editor in America terrified to open the mail.

MEGAN: And Hill staffers! Don't forget the Daschle intern he poisoned.

MOE: With brothers like these!

The eldest of his two brothers, Thomas Ivins, said he was not surprised by the events that have unfolded. "He buckled under the pressure from the federal government," Thomas Ivins said, adding that FBI agents came to Ohio last year to question him about his brother. "I was questioned by the feds, and I sung like a canary" about Bruce Ivins' personality and tendencies, Thomas Ivins said.
"He had in his mind that he was omnipotent."

Feds before bros I guess. Remember when the Right was telling everyone the anthrax came from IRAQ? Motherfucker.

MEGAN: Well, Ted Kaczynski's brother turned him in, actually. I mean, when your brother is a sociopathic mass murderer, I think it's cool.

C'mon, here's something you'll like: GM lost more money last quarter than Exxon made.

MOE: Here's a news organization that really doesn't deserve any stray spores:

In a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

MEGAN: Oh, God, really? That's what the WSJ has to say? Obama's not fat enough to lead?

Um, sorry, new brief tangent, Daniel Craig is going to play some (hot) bisexual Roman king or something. Is it too much to hope that he'll be shirtless the entire movie?

MEGAN: And, switching gears again, John Rich of country music band Big and Rich penned a new song for John McCain and it sounds sucktastic.

He stayed strong, stayed extra long til they let all the other boys out. Now we've got a real man with an American plan, we're going to put him in the big White House.

MOE: Okay, that Times story reminds me of a thing that I think about earnings stories which is that they should just all come with little graphics so you know exactly what they're talking about. Like, I don't think that story lists a revenue figure for the quarter, though here

The company lost $4.4 billion in North America in the period, and its revenues dropped 33 percent, from $29.7 billion to $19.8 billion. That compared with a profit of $92 million in the quarter a year ago.

it looks like they list a North American revenue figure. I'm not sure. Anyway, the point is, net profit figures exist mostly to win the sympathies of the IRS and thus, when you see that one company's "losses" exceed another company's earnings, you kind of have to look a little closer at like how $83 billion in OIL earnings became $11 billion on profits. And that's where you learn that EXXON actually also lost money in the united states, due to the same commodity prices that earned it so much in its "upstream" exploration business. Which is to say, I throw up my hands. I'm still smarting from this Ivins dude.
"Why isn't this story the lead story in every newscast in America?" that blonde Fox anchor just asked.
GUESS WHAT IS.

MEGAN: Barack Obama "playing the race card"? Charlie Rangel not getting censured for doing shady shit? The Pakistani government cooperating in bombing the Indian embassy in Kabul? Oh, wait, hahaha, yeah, Americans don't give a shit about that.

McCain being senile? Rielle Hunter's baby's birth certificate not listing a father because under California law if there's not a husband she needs the father to sign a bunch of legal paperwork agreeing that he is?

MOE: Oh Jesus. That's what you get for not sufficiently appreciating Musharraf? Or what?

The government officials were guarded in describing the new evidence and would not say specifically what kind of assistance the ISI officers provided to the militants. They said that the ISI officers had not been renegades, indicating that their actions might have been authorized by superiors.
“It confirmed some suspicions that I think were widely held,” one State Department official with knowledge of Afghanistan issues said of the intercepted communications. “It was sort of this ‘aha’ moment. There was a sense that there was finally direct proof.”

MEGAN: Or it was in the works before Uncle Pervy left? Who knows. I thought when India and Pakistan both got nukes they were done being mad at each other.

But what, is the Fox News girl sad isn't the lead story? Inquiring minds want to know...

MOE: What do you think it is really direct proof of? Like, direct proof the universe is completely fucked? Direct proof civil liberties are overrated?

Oh, and the story was this a-ha moment Lots of a-ha moments today!

MEGAN: Oh, for Chrissakes. We've become so fat and so lazy that we want a pill to make it all better? Like, we'll spend untold millions of dollars researching and then paying for a pharmaceutical product to prevent having to go for a freaking walk?

MOE: But think of the countless BLOGGER LIVES IT WILL SAVE.

MEGAN: Until they discover the side effect that using it in conjunction with Movable Type causes seizures and brain damage, not that that's not already a side effect of Movable Type.

Hey, so, like, wanna address the elephant in the virtual room? Because I won't get to say it other than in the comment threads and shit, but I'm going to miss doing this with you. It was fun even when I was hungover and depressed and it and you were the reasons I got out of bed in the mornings the weeks after I got fired from Wonkette. Well, I mean, woke up anyway. I wrote a lot of them from bed.

MOE: Uhhhhh I don't do goodbyes very well. And somehow I don't think this will be the last time I'm on the Crappy Hour. I actually have a lot of ideas for how you should improve it in my absence that I'm going to write you a memo about. But yeah, like, I learned a lot of stuff doing this! Like how having a hangover doesn't always help one's writing! And how much I hate memes. Also, we are going to get that Bloggingheads ripoff idea worked out if I have to send you a fancy camera. That will be soooooo fun.

MEGAN: Yeah, I sort of suck at goodbyes, too, and I'm glad to hear you're not completely opposed to the idea of doing this again because, well, I mean, it's kinda weird contemplating doing it without you ever. Also, my dad mostly fixed my other computer with which my camera is more compatible, so I think that's totally do-able. And I look forward to your memo, which I will proceed to get stinking drunk in your honor before I read.

MOE: And yeah, Spencer? You should try to enlist Mike Madden of Salon some mornings. Pressler owes us an IM or too. I mean shit, I could do it once a week. But I like the ones where there's a focus, like OIL or PEDOPHILE FUNDAMENTALIST MORMONS or ANDY SAMBERG AND HIS $300 MILLION ALBANIAN AMMUNITIONS whatever. Or, like that one day when we were all set to join the Iranian resistance! Or that charming KBR gang rape story! So much, so much we have been through together.

MEGAN: Shh, Spencer will be hurt when he finds out that we're thinking about opening ourselves up to other men! But, um, yeah, I'm got some ideas in that regard, too, I mean, I'm rarely a one-man woman, intellectually speaking. I have been a one-woman woman for a bit, now, though, except for that one time with Sinister Rouge but she tempted me so! But the ones where we stayed with one topic were pretty cool.

MOE: Yeah I think I'd like to do a one-topic one every so often. Maybe once a week! And commenters can decide the topic! We can poll them! And challenge them to present us with appropriate reading materials so we don't have to do all the work! Hahaha remember when I wanted to poll them as to which job I should take? Good times. I was going to try and find "I Hate You, I Love You" by the Dead Milkmen to express my commenter gratitude but I can't so you'll have to make do with this. God if the Dead Milkmen would write a song about Alycia Lane that would be like our anthem. The dead milkmen and Santogold.

I miss Philly.