MEGAN: Hey, I'd like a dudely take on the my wife is hot enough to dance for y'all naked thing McCain did at Sturgis. I asked a friend of mine — granted, a Republican with a sick sense of humor — and he was like, you're making a feminist mountain out of a dude-joke molehill but I'm assuming you would disagree?

SPENCER:: Given that I recall IMing you repeatedly in spittle-flecked outrage over McCain's parking-lot pimping, why, yes, yes, I do.

MEGAN: Well, it was hard for me to see the spittle on this end of the conversation...

SPENCER: It's an issue of context. If McCain was, say, a biker and so was Cindy, and they showed up to Sturgis to participate — then fine, that's the culture, everyone's a willing participant. But think back to the playground. imagine your friend suddenly gets to hang out with the cool d00ds who picked on him — what he's always wanted, right — but the price is to insult or injure the one friend who always stood by him and he does it. that tells you everything you need to know about the asshole's character: there's no one he won't betray. McCain, in his desperation, decided to throw the woman who not only mothered his children but bankrolled his whole career under the Harley.

MEGAN: Or under the leering gazes of thousands of men. Those are probably heavier than a Harley.

SPENCER:: and here's the other thing about that. The cool kids? They don't respect you when you do that. What they're doing is seeing what they can make you do. It's not a test you pass.

MEGAN: But wasn't McCain kind of always one of the cool dudes? Not that they don't betray everyone to remain cool, too.

SPENCER: At this point, as Maureen Dowd quotes a Senate friend of McCain's as saying, not anymore:

“John’s eaten up with envy,” said one. “His image of himself was always the handsome, celebrity flyboy.

MEGAN: Getting old sucks, dude.

SPENCER: i really want to quote some "Celebrity Skin" lyrics.

MEGAN: Oh, go ahead, I actually love Hole.

SPENCER: What must Cindy have felt when McCain said that?

MEGAN: I mean, if anyone there didn't really know that it was a stripper/simulated sex acts contest and not a "beauty pageant," it was probably Cindy. I'd suggest the question to ask is what did she feel when she found out. And then I'd venture to guess that he told her (or one of his handlers did, or one of hers) that John didn't know what kind of contest it was and she accepted that. Because that's what you do.

SPENCER:: YES BUT, Commenter JaneSays IM'd me yesterday and noted that Sam Stein at HuffPost reported what went on at that pageant days before McCain attended, so it's not like this wasn't out there

MEGAN: Oh, no, certainly, I believe I said that I don't see how John McCain didn't know. But Cindy's been — by her own admission — a bit sheltered at times. I would assume she's spent virtually none of her life hanging out at bikers rallies and whatever. So she probably thought it was like Miss Cornstalk or whatever at the Iowa County Fair, not a "sluttiest girl of the week" award on Girls Gone Wild Island or something.

SPENCER: But how does McCain not know? You know that campaigns relentlessly vet every venue for a candidate's appearance. Someone in McCain's entourage researched the whole thing and either told McCain what Miss Buffalo Chip was, or should have.

MEGAN: I mean, in the picture I used yesterday, the T-shirt promoting the contest is clearly visible — and the chick with everything but her nipples showing doesn't make it look like no Miss America pageant, I agree. As I said, I'm in agreement that McCain knew. I'm assuming that Cindy didn't because I'd bet they keep her in the dark, and that when she found out they told her John didn't know and she bought it because you almost have to to be able to live.

SPENCER: oh and SPEAKING of things that people were supposed to know, do you remember what happened 7 years ago today?

MEGAN: 7 years ago today? No, I can't say that it rings any bells. Was it when Osama assassinated the head of the Northern Alliance as a pre-thank-you to the Taliban for protecting him after September 11th? Wonder what Uncle Pervy's excuse is...

SPENCER: on this day, 7 years ago, CIA delivered to Bush the following assessment:

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."

Happy August 6! WE WILL NEVER FORGET

MEGAN: You mean, we'll never forget again.

SPENCER: (Ahmed Shah Massoud was assassinated Sept 9, 2001, by two al-Qaeda operatives disguised as journalists.)

MEGAN: Hey, a shot in the dark. I knew it was sometime almost 7 years ago.

SPENCER:: speaking of shots in the dark, what did you think of Paris Hilton's response to McCain?

MEGAN: I personally loved it, though I'll admit I saw it on Attackerman first, after which the entire world either emailed me personally or sent it to the tips line. I especially liked "I'll see you at the debates, bitches." Also, I was very impressed by her ability to parrot the policy talk without stumbling. Most politicians can't do that.

SPENCER:: you have no idea how many liberal journobloggers are now having second thoughts about paris hilton. how is this whole "Celebrity" ad not a debacle for McCain? I also liked the idea of choosing Rihanna for her VP.

MEGAN: I have to admit, I nerded out right there because I knew Rihanna was from the Caribbean and thus ineligible. (Yes, I bought her first single.)

SPENCER: But her parents are American, right? Or is it not like McCain being born in Panama? dance parties at the Flophouse always feature the jay-z-included remix of "Umbrella".

MEGAN: McCain was born on a U.S. military base in Panama and children born there were supposedly considered born on American soil. But Wikipedia says her parents weren't American, for what that's worth.

SPENCER:: and now I'm feeling All Time Low's pop-punk cover.

MEGAN: Honestly, I'm listening to Pon de Replay still. But we all know my musical taste is way lamer than yours.

SPENCER: I didn't know she had other songs.

MEGAN: Wait, really? Yeah, no, this was her first single. She's also got SOS, where she samples "Tainted Love". Yeah, I own that, too. I'll bet 50 Cent doesn't cry SOS in his new Iraqi video game, though.

SPENCER: Ahhhh but it is more than just Iraq! watch Fif man a helicopter gunship and shoot at insurgents in the Afghan mountains. so this is a new Activision game, out in November, in which 50 Cent and G-Unit start killing people in Iraq & Afghanistan because a drug dealer named Kamal stole the box office receipts from a show of theirs in a "war-torn" country, according to the synopsis, which helpfully adds that the show was "sold out" in case you were wondering.

MEGAN: Well, why wouldn't 50 and G-Unit sell out a show in a war-torn country?

SPENCER: I, of course, will buy the game, but you have to wonder about 50's cash when he's willing to cross two different theaters of war for payback on a couple of grand.

MEGAN: Revenge is it's own motivation, dude...

SPENCER:: that new g-unit record has the only possible improvement on the "fuck the police" dis- - that being Lloyd Banks' now immortal "fuck the police/ with a HIV carrier/ no vaseline/ and a M-16". What's also striking about the game is that 50 crosses, as I said, two theaters of active U.S. combat and nowhere on the game's website is even the slightest hint of patriotic motivation. I respect 50's unwillingness to pander.

MEGAN: He's unlike most politicians in that way, I guess.

SPENCER: Right, well, Bush was asked about Maliki calling for withdrawal along the lines of Obama's Iraq policy, and here's what the president said:

"I talk to him all the time, and that's not what I heard," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post aboard Air Force One on the start of a trip to Asia. "I heard a man who wants to work with the United States to come up with a rational way to have the United States withdraw combat troops depending upon conditions on the ground, that's all."

Is it possible to pander to yourself?

MEGAN: I think it's certainly possible to fool yourself. But just because you buy your own story doesn't mean everyone will.

MOE: OMG someone named Emily Weiss just befriended me on Facebook and I thought it was the Stepfordy Teen Vogue intern from The Hills but it's not, it's just some other girl born in 1984. I am sure she is an infinitely nicer and better and more appealing person than the F-list socialite Emily Weiss but you know.
$PENCER: ok go
are you sure you just IMd that to the right person
because i don't know at all who any of your reference refer to
MOE: What is going on today besides this Jackson thing and FISA? Did you read the front page spy story in the Times? Because I did not, although I made an admirable effort at the deli.
$PENCER: no, but if you want an excellent recap of what just happened with FISA, i refer you to the Windy's Mike Lillis
MOE: Oh that picture is fierce
$PENCER: did you see Ta-Nehisi Coates' reaction to JJ?
i know it's like Chris Dodd is Oliver Hardy
anyway here's Ta-Nehisi getting all Too Hot For The Root or the Atlantic:

My Dad is gonna kill me. But here's Jesse—on Fox News no less—telling some other dude that he'd like to cut Obama's nuts out. Nice. I'm not even sure this hurts Obama in anyway. Even Jesse's own son condemned him. There is a certain strain of the civil right era that really just needs to have a Jack and Coke and call it a day. It's not that we aren't grateful. We so really are. But this is getting embarrassing...

MOE: oooooh too hot for The Root??? But The Root is the hotness ...
$PENCER: about that spy story, i leave all things China to you
MOE: one of the links on The Root's blogroll is something called "Conversate is not a word" and that blog has made this point before w/r/t Wright and Sharpton and I think Clinton and maybe we could add Linda Hirshman to that mix.
$PENCER: i use conversate
don't make me call the Grammar Police
BECAUSE THAT SITE IS DOWN
so give me your thoughts on China and then I want to talk about the other huge fucking deal that people are ignoring, which is that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq just endorsed Barack Obama's Iraq policy
MOE: Well the thing about Chinese espionage that I think is kind of the point of the story is that they can't really decide if its spying for the government or just intellectual property infringement, and while spying is inherently awesome patent law is less so so the use of the word "Spy" in the headline does not guarantee amazing content. Although I'm mining it.
$PENCER: interestingly enough this was kind of the plot of one of James Webb's lesser-known war novels from 1991
except with employees of a Japanese company selling secrets of (deep breath) a software firm that had a Pentagon contract to nefarious North Koreans
in order to divert attention from the scandal, a chickenhawk defense secretary entangles the U.S. in an Eritrean-Ethiopean war
... and to thinkWebb could have been vice president
MOE: Oh that would be a big deal, please share your ideas. So basically the Iraq president agrees that it was a stupid idea to invade the Iraq even though that is the only reason he got to be president of the Iraq and yes, that is how much Iraq sucks that he is willing to say he would rather step into a time machine back to when he was hanging out in Syria or whatever?
$PENCER: unfortunately only the Iranians make the component parts for the Wayback Machine, so to step into it would be to admit the close ties between Baghdad and Teheran so Ryan Crocker really doesn't want that, but anyways
let's conversate on Iraq
on Monday, maliki went to the UAE to get some debt relief, and said "You know what? We should really set a timetable for the US to withdraw"
the State Dept response was LALALALALA I DONT HEAR YOU AND WHATEVER YOU WERE PROBABLY MISTRANSLATED OR MISQUOTED YOU KNOW HOW THOSE REPORTERS GET
MOE: Oy!! Can we get an awkward press conference clip or not right now? How often does the State Dept have to give press conferences anyway?
$PENCER: but then a longtime U.S. (and Iranian!) stooge named Mowaffaq al-Rubaie met with the most important Shiite religious leader in Iraq, and said explicitly that we need to get the hell on
i think that was Sean McCormack's tuesday am briefing
anyway here's the best part
Maliki was like, no, I really mean it
from today's Wash Post:

Iraqi spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in Baghdad on Wednesday that a U.S. pullout could be completed in several years. "It can be 2011 or 2012," he said. "We don't have a specific date in mind, but we need to agree on the principle of setting a deadline."

so now you tell MOE: how does Barack Obama lose the Iraq debate?
MOE: Okay here's the ish on the China spy shit: for one thing, all this shit seems to involve Taiwanese. Taiwan is supposed to hate China but actually they are a little too interested in cheap labor and gargantuan consumer market to bother with that, you understand, so anyway, blah blah blah a few big things China would like to figure out how to make: night vision goggles, military-grade accelerometers for smart bombs and "refinements that make missiles more difficult to detect." mmmmmm yeah I'm not sure how sexy this is. What's an accelerometer look like even?
$PENCER: oh wow gurlz know NOTHING about defense LOL
it looks like this, duh
so nothing to see in the NYT china spy story but Pulitzer-bait?
what a shame, Ting Ting
MOE: oooh cylindrical like a TAMPON. btw I was explaining to my 2 girlfriends yesterday that missile test stories i.e. The Iran yesterday are sooooo boring to cover, because they invariably boil down to the shop-worn cliche of "sabre-rattling" and my BFFs were like "whoa, really? They use that term, 'sabre rattling'?" And then they started fighting with imaginary sabres and i was like "No seriously guys it's THAT STUPID."
MOE: Lolz. And yeah it's not Pulitzer material. No Efraim Diveroli that's for sure.
$PENCER: yeah what you don't see in Pentagon press conferences is the pre-conference saber rattling that reporters do with their DONGS
poor Martha Raddatz and Pam Hess, always left out of the fun
no wonder Pam moved to the AP intelligence beat
MOE: What's this about Obama regretting letting his kiddies on TV?
$PENCER: you tell me!
MOE: I mean, sure, Access Hollywood isn't Charlie Rose, but…
$PENCER: before I have to go — — i need you to say, just once in CH, what you think about a story of the day
MOE: Here is that. I certainly respectfully disagree. I actually had a dream the other night that Michelle got knocked up again in the White House.
$PENCER: oohhh NPR i forgot how it soothes my liberal's soul now that i have no radio
so you disagree with the decision to put the Obama girls on TV?
i need to know what the age's best working writer thinks about this!
MOE: I don't think I know what to think of Jesse Jackson. On one hand, wait, what?That really happened? On the other hand, of course it happened, because this entire campaign has consisted of a marathon real time PSA dedicated to hammering it home to our generation time and time fucking again that Boomers Are Officially Unfit To Run The Country; In Fact They Fucking Always Were; We Were Just Too Busy Updating Our Myspace Pages To Notice And Hey, By The Way, What Happened To The Economy?
MOE: I think you compromised a bit of the credibility you built up calling me the world's greatest living writer by implying that it was a good thing no one ever turned in Bill Clinton for sexual assault because you see while the whole sexual assault thing was resurfacing to embarrass him in the media he heroically tried to distract the country by bombing Al Qaeda.... comparing me to Bill is just a messy analogy is all I'm saying. Unless it was purposely that way?
$PENCER: wait huh?
i was making a point about clinton and al-qaeda, and the structure of Winstead's argument, not Clinton and sexual assault
victim blaming
i don't think Clinton is a problematic analogy at all under those circumstances and in this context
MOE: I was just kidding!
$PENCER: ok i am reading galleys way way past deadline so i am unable to catch the subtler points made by our finest living writer

• There's probably some economic metaphor to be had in a story about 13 people being trampled by bulls in Pamplona, but then again it might be a cautionary tale about what the tourism industry can convince you is "fun." [Washington Post]
• Speaking of a snow job, guess who is the latest politician calling for a withdrawal timetable in Iraq sooner rather than later? Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, that's who. No worries, Bush and McCain will find other reasons not to withdraw yet. [Washington Post]
• Jim Webb, though, is totally withdrawing from VP consideration, though. [HuffPo]

• In possibly the smartest logistical decision made to date, Barack Obama will accept the nomination at Invesco Field, which seats 75,000 people instead of the 20,000 they can cram into the Pepsi Center where the rest of the convention is being held. Here's to the speech being slightly less of a clusterfuck than every other acceptance speech in the history of televised party conventions. [NY Times]
• Oh, and he's kind of kicking ass at the polls right now, so maybe it won't even be his last? [CQ Politics]
• And, if we're lucky, the good corrupt politicians of Alaska might get their asses kicked both by exorbitant legal bills and at the polls this year. I'll take either one, actually, since they're using donations from lobbyists (mostly oil company types, one assumes) to pay them. In the immortal words of Nelson: Ha-ha. [HuffPo]