Like rampant fiscal irresponsibility to the greenback! Which leads me to a stupid but maybe-accurate metaphor that brings into account Maria Bartriomo's opinions on tax policy. Maria Bartiromo argues that people who make $200,000 shouldn't be necessarily described as "rich." This is because she lives in New York, but also because she must abide by the paradox that dictates that successful females invest not only colossal sums of money but roughly two hours extra daily simply to avoid the appearance of being "devalued." Of course, that investment, which is not optional, carries with it not only tremendous opportunity cost, which is devaluing in its own way, but the additional degradation of scrutiny and/or mockery re the process itself (Callan's heels, Bartiromo's Botox) and the additional nuisances of the Boy's Club, sexual harassment etc. It almost makes you want to just have kids and freelance and endure the contempt of people like Linda Hirshman, which is all fine and good, but after all that you're still stuck getting your period. So basically you're screwed either way and no wonder we are all programmed to be somewhat lesbian.

Callan, Gregory Out At Lehman [WSJ]
Becky Quick Teaches You How To "Dress Like A Financier" [Dealbreaker]

MEGAN: By Friday, I swear, it's like sheer force of will to drag ass out of bed.

MOE: seriously. I did that thing that I never do where I assumed it must be Saturday.
 
MEGAN: I was like allllllmost awake, and then I fell back asleep again.

MOE: Also, I feel like there's no Crappy hour that can beat yesterday's. Though I found Andy Armsberg's spare MySpace profile.

MEGAN: get through airport security.

MOE: Do you think that the Pentagon would have bought all that ammo from him if they had known that in October 2005 he said that

for the moment im basically just working and chilling with my boyz when im not, im looking for some hobbies like i keep saying im gonna go to the gym and i started playing football again which is definately my favorite sport. im one of those guys who needs to be entertained and having lots of fun all the time so if your also an undiagnosed case of ADD look me up.

MEGAN: No, I mean, I read that and it's no longer surprising that he was a military defense contractor.

MOE: I bet he totally sends text messages such as "I'll need someone to fuck around 11:45."
8:55 AM 
MEGAN: Or the one I sent you last week, which came from a defense contractor! "News flash: looking for a fuck tonight. That said, how are you?"
 
MOE: Oh right. NEWS FLASH.
Looking...for...a segue. What is in the news? Guess who they just had on Hannity last night?

MEGAN: A pirate?

MOE: This guy. I don't really know how to describe his worldview, except to say, "I'm really glad Fox gives equal time to all irrational, inexplicable and yet also hateful viewpoints such as

MEGAN: Oh, Christ, I watched his shit last week. Obama's a pimp? He's got a white mama and is thus is... evil. He's practically preaching like the evils of interracial relationships only from the other side of it. Wright's a total moderate by comparison.
OMG, my favorite headline this morning just popped up! "Dempsey to become Central Command chief"
  Sadly, it's not Patrick.
 
MOE: hahaha I guess we should talk about the Iraq today.
  It seems to be in the news.
And we never officially celebrated the fifth anniversary of the invasion.
  
Also under stuff we never did: get oil?
It looks like the evildoers control the oil territories.

MEGAN: Ah, well, than I guess suddenly the reason we're still there is now clear. Fuck "stopping" a civil war, we just need to wrest control of the taps from whomever hates us and has control.

MOE: Speaking of do you ever think about the Middle East when you are squeezing your pores? Because I actually wrote about how I do that yesterday, and now I am referencing it again, and I bet if I consulted my Facebook Horoscope "Intellect" rating it would be 3% right now, and that is exactly where I will probably click next. But maybe in the name of defying Astrological Determinism I should read about Basra.
  Oh fuck, haha, speaking of my diagnosed case of ADD, I meant to make this about Bob Casey endorsing Obama.

MEGAN: I did read that! I don't squeeze my pores, I use one of those Tweezerman things I showed you and I usually do it to relax and focus, yes. But I'm not normally focusing on the Middle East.
  
Oh, Bob Casey.
 
MOE: And also, have some sort of conversation that I am going to sound soooooo credible having right now re the fact that Obama is smarter and better informed on pretty much every issue than John McCain and that could make for an amazing campaign.

MEGAN: Does anyone actually question whether Obama is smart, or smarter than McCain? McCain's never been known as a hyperintellectual Senator, just one with good staff.
Also, Bob Casey is totally an Obamublican, even though he's a Democrat. Congrats, Pennsylvania, on electing an anti-choice Democrat to office. No worries about Supreme Court picks or abortion politics there!

MOE: I think McCain is smart. He's just the "talker" kind of smart. He is that guy who will date you on the basis of the fact that you get his jokes and then six months will pass and he will have this weird moment where he starts actually listening to you and goes, "Huh. You kind of have a point there, kid!"
I didn't know that Iraq had finally returned to its prewar level of oil production, to return the subject to my pores.

MEGAN: I totally did a Body Shop tea tree oil mask last night to cut my oil production.

MOE: Who bought oil from Saddam Hussein prewar? Anyway, whatever you know, when capitalism gives up on Iraq I think we know who's won.

"You'll see some limited initiatives to get a foothold in the country," said David Kirsch of PFC Energy, a Washington-based consulting firm. "What you are not going to see though, we estimate, in the next 10 years are the conditions that allow you to do the really significant type of investments that could let Iraq hit its geologic potential of six million barrels per day."

MEGAN: But President Bush told me yesterday that Iraq is negotiating its entry into the WTO, so everything will totes be okay.

s

MOE: Anyway, back to Obama for a second. Forgetting my own personal hard-on for the guy, he does an amazing thing when he is talking to capitalists, and that is he discusses economic policy in a way that doesn't even remotely sound like populist rhetoric. I doubt his interview with Maria Bartiromo will be sound-bitten anywhere or repurposed into campaign propaganda. He made her look like an idiot. He gave a little chuckle when she said, "But! Small business! They are WORRIED! That you're a SOCIALIST!" and he said something very telling about how they say they're worried when these surveys get taken because they're taken by local Chambers of commerce after said chambers of commerce hold luncheons and get them worried, systematically, every time there's a minimum wage increase on the table or whathaveyou, and how the sky never falls and they're losing their credibility. I wonder if he was referring to Chicago, where I vaguely recall some economic development project that demanded all employees get paid $10 an hour? Anyway, whatever. He sounded intelligent and sober and she sounded reflexive and ideological.

MEGAN: Oh, Christ, I ALSO love how everyones that thinks there should be more government intervention in the economy to prevent market failures is a Socialist right up until Wall Street wants the Fed to pony up a gazillion dollars to save their asses from the market failures of their own making.
Also, my only props to the Money Honey, having just seen her on TV on Sunday for the first time in a while, is that she seems to be Botox-less. You go, Maria. Be your insane market-will-solve-all hotness without knives or shots.

MOE: He also pointed out that he wasn't an ideologue. Anyway, not to babble on about this but an undecided reader saw him give a speech yesterday and wrote me an email complimenting me on "placing my bets" with him. Lol.

he gave a brief speech and then spent about an hour or so answering questions from the audience. a lot of the questions had to do with his campaign. he was very forthcoming about the past and future challenges of his candidacy, concerns that he wouldnt be able to get the necessary funding or establishment support, that he was too white or (more recently) too black, too professorial or too rhetorical, etc., etc. he acknowledged that the main challenge in the general election will be overcoming concerns whether he has the right temperament to lead the nation in a time of crisis. he conceded that a lot of people will be taking a leap of faith to put a first-term african-american senator with a name like barack hussein obama into the white house at a time like this. he got into specifics on a couple of items, e.g., energy, funding for veterans, general economic malaise, phased (and responsible) withdrawal from iraq (with which i tend to disagree), the need to engage iran (with apt comparisons to jfk-krushchev, reagan-gorby, etc.). the thing is this: there's all this meta-stuff about his campaign that a guy like me can get caught up in, but when it comes down to it, the fact is that he is a convincing candidate.

MEGAN: Oh, no, honey, don't worry! Paulson says that the President's stimulus package will totes create 600,000 jobs.
 
MOE: Oh yes. And Hillary is still around. Look! It is my girlfriend Peggy!

That's what the Bosnia story was about. Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac — and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren't, if she thought what she was saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought — either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual).

MOE: Meh, I think the "You have to lie and be Machiavellian and speak in poll-tested half-truths and appeal to statistically-proven demographic subniches to get anything done in this terrible cynical political world" is a total cop-out. That said, I regularly lie about certain things, I am sure. Like I think I say that I am 5'7 even though I am probably just 5'6.5 because everyone lies about their height. Which reminds me of that thing about the North Koreans and how they're not tall enough.

MEGAN: I dunno, all candidates talk like that. Obama probably talks like that. Bush promised no more wars to prevent other countries civil wars and no more nation-building. The problem is that most Americans don't want to hear the truth, they want to hear what they want the truth to be.

5 minutes

MOE: No, you know what? I think that's the thing. I do think that this country has gotten to the point where they're like, "NO. Just give me the diagnosis. Tell me. Don't fuck around." And Obama is the guy who's like "hard work and positive thinking and some surgery to remove malignant tumors here and there and we just might beat this thing" and McCain is like "grit your teeth and give me all the radiation I can take cause I can TAKE IT! I owe it to my buddies!" Oh god, it's 9:44 and we still haven't discussed Bob Casey.

MEGAN: Bob Casey endorsed Obama. He's not charismatic or particularly popular.
  
But he is a superdelegate, which Obama needs and Clinton needs to keep him from getting.

MOE: Bob Casey is a pro-life Catholic who unseated Rick Santorum by a beautiful 20 point margin in which I am pleased to report I was part. Bob Casey is not someone with the clout or the machine of someone like an Ed Rendell or even a Mike Nutter, but he is someone with a different kind of influence because of that. Can you think of another openly pro-life Obama supporter? I think that goes over big with a lot of Pennsylvanians. Apparently the state is 30% catholic. I'm actually surprised that's not higher. Related: why does it seem like everyone is from Pennsylvania originally? Not just SarahMC.

MEGAN: It's the 6th most populous state, and yet the economy isn't that great so people go elsewhere?
 
MOE: Whoa, Condi addressed the fact that she is black? WTF.

MEGAN: Wow, and she didn't even crap on affirmative action.

• Commenting on an Eliot Spitzer whore scandal is vaguely as exciting than reading about the intricacies of trade negotiations — and also, somewhat less important — but I had to point out this quote from a source close to Kristin "Billie" Davis (who "hails from a rough-in-tumble California trailer park.") "She personally interfaced with Spitzer a number of times." Wow, "interface." That used to be corporate jargon for "talked to" and now it is being used to denote... bareback anal. [NYP]
  
• "His sex appeal lies in being a successful businessman and politician. Women like a guy who is in control, and a man who knows what he wants." That's the editor-in-chief of Playgirl on why she'd like to land Eliot Spitzer for a cover shoot incorporating a young woman in a Girls Gone Wild T-shirt. I know; you're creaming just thinking of interfacing with it right? [US]
  
• Wait, speaking of: raunchy outtakes from the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog are now being sold as a $200 "art" book. [NYP]
  
• Wait, no, really speaking of, Barack Obama was interviewed by Maria Bartiromo, who tried to paint him as some sort of Hugo Chavez character by baiting him with a question about the Fed's bailout of Bear, to which he said, "Well, I wasn't privy to Bear Stearns' balance sheet." He doesn't sound like a socialist! [CNBC]

• A fifteen year old in the UK has been found guilty of beating a woman to death because she was goth. [BBC]
• Oh, great, now the enemies decide to register their discontent with the our invasion of the Iraq in a peaceful manner? What's next, hunger strikes? [NYT]
• Foreigners on the election: Germany wants the "Black Kennedy" because they are "romantic" that way; Mexicans like Hillary because NAFTA was good for them, Chinese like HIllary because NAFTA was good for them too, Israelis distrust Obama and Muslims in the Middle East think he can't win because "his middle name is like mine." [WSJ]
• What cocktail will be the Next Cosmo? The cognac industry is hard at work on it. But it won't be easy. "Brand promotional pamphlets and in-house recipe books are cemeteries of forgotten drinks." Ah, life. It is such struggle. [WSJ]
• Gubernatorial corruption etc.: now also in Puerto Rico! [NYT]
• So that was "ten days that changed capitalism," we just don't really know how exactly. [WSJ]

MOE: This story is almost too wonderful.

MOE: Gene Weingarten reads blogs and listens to talk radio and watches five television sets for 24 hours and it gives him a brief appreciation for Rush Limbaugh.

MEGAN: The WaPo site has been trying to get me to read that story for 2 full days but I have been resisting its lure because I don't want to know my future.

MOE: Okay, I'll send you some excerpts. First

". . . the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." — Umberto Eco.

MEGAN: I read The Name of the Rose in high school. I was mad, upon seeing the movie, that there was not more of Christian Slater's bare ass. I think this would not be an opinion I would hold today were the movie to be made today, with today's Christian Slater.

MOE: And speaking of ...the down there zone, remember when Jane Fonda said "cunt" on TV?

Fortunately, the gaffe is all over the Web in streaming video, and, yes indeed, here she is, Hanoi Jane herself, the bete noire of right wing radio, flagrantly uttering the unutterable. Clearly, Rush and Bill are courageously willing to address this shocking and distasteful subject even at the risk of driving their audiences into multi-orgasmic rapture.
Limbaugh joyfully eviscerates Fonda and moves quickly on to other things, but O'Reilly is in high dudgeon and is all over this reprehensible event. He's morally outraged, and seems to want to wring all he can get out of it, as though it were, say, a luffa sponge.
As someone in the broadcasting business, he says, he doesn't want to become "the scold police," but he wonders just the same if someone ought to call the FCC and demand punishment.

(Later at night, on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor," he will devote an entire segment to the issue, practically sputtering in exasperation when he can't persuade his guest, lawyer Anita Kay, to agree with him that heads must roll. Kay will point out, reasonably, that Fonda wasn't using the word in a hostile manner; she was simply stating the actual title of one of the monologues from the play "The Vagina Monologues," which is, ironically, about how the word should be destigmatized.) B-b-but "this is the most vile word in the lexicon of obscenity!" O'Reilly protests. Laughing, Kay basically tells him to calm down and grow up, that the average 12-year-old girl has heard this word, and it's no big deal. It's my favorite moment of the day. (Anita Kay, the cure for the common scold.) The peril of listening to Limbaugh and O'Reilly at the same time is that you tend to compare them, and these are dangerous waters for an unapologetic, unreconstructed New Deal liberal like me. The comparison makes you actually like Rush. He's funny; O'Reilly is not. Limbaugh teases and baits his political adversaries; O'Reilly sneers and snarls at them. Limbaugh is mock-heroic; O'Reilly is self-righteous. So, when Limbaugh speculates that the Democrats in the House committee went after Roger Clemens because liberals hate cherished American institutions such as churches, the Boy Scouts and baseball, you know he's sorta kidding. When O'Reilly says liberals who oppose torture of prisoners just don't care how many people will die in a terrorist attack, you know he's as serious as an aneurysm.

MOE: I can only listen to Fox News, on account of my mysterious muting problem. Although I was thinking of switching to CNBC this morning. Here we go. The Dow is possibly up because JP Morgan might be raising its bid for Bear Stearns. Wait, the market is not open yet, that is just what the futures betters are betting. They are talking about something called fractionalization creating a lot of possibilities for arbitrage in these securities. I am not really sure what this means. Do regular CNBC viewers really engage in "arbitrage"? Whatever. Ooooh, someone called Wisdomtree.com is pushing an exchange traded fund that tracks India's economy. Good idea. All right, back to the meme of the day. What is it? A lot of things happened this weekend, including the publication of the Peggy Noonan column that finally pushed me over the edge into the realm of begging Peggy Noonan for an interview.

MEGAN: Also, as of this morning, 4,000 soldiers have officially died in Iraq. Cheney would like us to know that the White House mourns every single death but it is, after all, a "volunteer army."
MEGAN: Because there's nothing nauseating about saying that.
MEGAN: They volunteered to die, so it's not as big a deal apparently. Perhaps to commemorate, we can each take a moment of silence today to think about the 4,000 soldiers and then yell "Cheney, go fuck yourself"

MOE: Aiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee. Puppies! Polar Bears! Peggy! Peggy heard the speech and thought "Go America Go." She just thought it was kind of a downer. The first comment goes:

I think Peggy needs to recycle Reagan101 again, and while she's at it perhaps she can read what a real journalist thought of the speech.....Washinton Post writer Charles Krauthammer's article "The Speech, A Brilliant Fraud".

MEGAN: I mean, that sort of a little bit puts the lie to the "all volunteer" army idea. Because definitely some people join despite having tons of other options because it's the family business or they have heroic ideals or just want the extra money or whatever, but some people do it because they don't have good grades, or money for college or career prospects or even job prospects where they grew up. So, yeah, they volunteered to not be even more grindingly poor, to not try to get on welfare, to do something to achieve that American dream thing everyone's been telling them about their whole lives and instead some number of them end up on food stamps anyway and are eking out on existence trying to stay alive in some country where they don't really want us.

MOE: Also, everything that Peggy Noonan said Obama was overly gloomy about can be summed up in this, Maria Bartiromo's response to Tim Russert's query as to what America's biggest economic challenge is.

Well, our biggest challenge economically right now is the tight credit environment.  From an individual standpoint, it is very tough to get a mortgage, it is very tough to borrow money anymore.  From a business standpoint, the same thing.  I would say one of the key representations of what's happening right now is what happened at Carlyle Capital.  Very simple stuff, Tim.  They had $600 million in assets, they borrowed $22 billion. Doesn't work out.  The math just doesn't work.  And that's exactly what's happening.  People have overextended themselves, businesses as well as consumers, and now we're paying the price

MEGAN: Duh, Moe, the $600 million wasn't the only collateral. It was also secured by the fact that 90% of every person involved was an older white man who went to a small number of the right schools and participated in the dinner clubs or fraternities or whatever deemed appropriate by their set and who belongs to a small number of socially appropriate country clubs or whatever. That's the real
collateral.

MOE: DAMMIT YOU AND YOUR FINE PRINT MEGAN

MEGAN: I am a cunt like that.

MOE: Okay does rehashing that conversation I'm pretty sure we already had but for the constant cache-clearing of the 24-hour pundit cycle that we'll come back to a moment because I'm going to tell you about my mom, and also, ask what you did to commemorate Christ's resurrection, about how McCain wanted to switch parties after 2001 just delay the inevitable awesome conversation about the Nixon-tattoed Republican huckster who tipped off the government to Eliot Spitzer's whore habit (because he went to the same whores, duh) and also, printed up those clever Citizens United Not Timid T-shirts that sunk the Hillary campaign?
8:50 AM
MOE: Cunts are such a theme today!

MEGAN: To commemorate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ (no H., thanks), I had brunch that included bagels with lox, champagne and coffee. Then I took a nap. I worked, then I went to dinner with a friend who is having relationship issues, and I came home and worked some more.

MEGAN: And I talked to my parents.

MOE: I got high with a very good friend whose name I am gonna leave off the blog even though he seems to have posted pictures commemorating that on his Facebook profile. It was the first time I have ever 1. bought weed by myself, which I did successfully, along with the first time I have 2. attempted to roll a joint, an endeavor at which I failed miserably.The best part of the evening was buying junk food in anticipation of the muchies. The next morning we walked a mile and a half to Chipotle but it was closed. I got on the wrong subway home and ended up getting out in Williamsburg and walking home over the bridge. I smiled unilaterally at a lot of Hasids and realized it was Easter only when some dudes sitting at the front of the bridge said, "Hey sexy, happy Easter."

MEGAN: It was really good weather, wasn't it?

MOE: And my mother said that she always forgets until she visits my sister in Charlottesville how marginalized and disenfranchised black people are. And the throwing his grandma under the bus line went over well with her. She was like "when he said that I was like, oh my god that is like a universal experience, to cringe over how old white people talk about black people." We have a lot of typical white people in my family as you can probably tell.

MEGAN: Wow, your mom is cool. I think I might owe her some wine some time.

MOE: But it made me think, you know, the same thought Gene Weingarten had over the extent to which regular voters are completely oblivious to the meme of the moment and thank god for that.
MOE: Now G-d can you do something about William Kristol? And Pat Buchanan?

MEGAN: Word. The whole Gene Weingarten piece reminded me of the conversation I had with my parents about how I do this in the morning and I was like, well, I get up at 7, read 15+ sites and then start typing and they were like, wow, you're the most well-informed person we know and then I realized I was probably fucked and this is why I'm a political misanthrope.
MEGAN: I think Bill Kristol, who, seriously, if you put that man in some fucking clown make up IS THE JOKER FROM BATMAN will take care of his own demise. But someone get Rachel Maddow a spit shield for when she has to sit next to him on MSNBC.
MEGAN: and by "him" I mean Pat Buchanan

MOE: Apparently Michael Smerconish has been defending the speech. He's a much-beloved Pennsylvania conservative radio talker. Ugh, but before I feel click over on one more thing only to rue that here we are, balls deep in the memes again, let me call out this sentiment from Pat Buchanan's most recent blog utterance.

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

MOE: He actually asked, "Where is the gratitude?

MEGAN: So, why the FUCK is he still a commentator on MSNBC? Oh, right, they're trying to out-Fox Fox or something, because that's why they're 3rd in the ratings.

MOE: I'm not sure. I don't know. I think I have heard sentiments from my grandfather who was a typical white person of the first generation immigrant vein that would echo these sentiments. I think William F. Buckley might have echoed these statements. Enough of these statements might give you the notion that racism is endemic in white America, you know? Because implicit in statements like this, I don't have to point it out to you but I will anyway, was that buying and selling and pricing people as commodities is not a grave injustice if they are black. What is interesting is that Judeo Chrisitian rooted humanism is supposed to be the basis for the notion that a person is a person, uniquely different from other objects and organisms, and yet here he seems to be subverting that notion, rendering it backward according to some logic I can barely fathom, except to echo Obama via William Faulkner.
MOE: Via Peggy Noonan.
MOE: The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past.

MEGAN: Like, it's obviously not the motherfucking past if people like Pat Buchanan think that

MEGAN: Seriously? The means (slavery) are justified by the ends (acceptance of Jesus Christ as their savior, forced or not)? Seriously? This is what people think? What country do I live in? No wonder Michelle Obama isn't proud of it all the time.

MOE: Pat Buchanan went to my brother's high school, a Jesuit boy's school in Northeast DC. That is what is scariest but most fascinating about that statement. It is not coming from the progeny of anyone who actually owned slaves. Who actually knows, at all, what he is talking about. Perhaps he ought to listen to Mike Huckabee.

MEGAN: Perhaps Pat Buchanan, too, ought to just go fuck himself.
MEGAN: The list of people who can go fuck themselves seems to be growing.

MOE: You had a little piece of recent civil rights history you wanted to share with the class, didn't you Megan?

MEGAN: I did, in the vein of people that can go fuck themselves. The New York Times reminded its readers (some of whom heard it for the first time because they were too young at the time) that Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 Presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi with a nod to the unreconstructed racists of the world.

"In 1980, Ronald Reagan, campaigning on a platform that included "states' rights," opened his general election campaign in Philadelphia, Miss. — a decision criticized because it was where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964.

MEGAN: It was in a story on race in campaigns. Also, the incident was actually chronicled by no less than American chintzy painter Norman Rockwell in an enormous and moving painting that you will find in absolutely no book of his work anywhere (because I've tried) but you can see a bad internet print of it here. It's actually really moving in person.

MEGAN: Also, Lt. Governor Michael Steele? Former Senator JC Watts of Oklahoma? Condoleeza Rice? This is what the Republican Party thought was acceptable when you were joining up. Pat Buchanan's remarks? Still acceptable in the Republican party. If Obama has to explain his allegiance to his pastor and friend of 20 years and should have left him by the wayside to "prove" his love of America, I would like some explanations from you about that shit. Thank you. And go fuck yourselves.

MOE: No, go fuck whores!
MOE: Gay whores!
MOE: Kthanxbai.

Asked on "Hardball" about the repeated recalls of Chinese-made toys, Burnett said: "If China were to revalue its currency, or China is to start making, say, toys that don't have lead in them or food that isn't poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up, and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the United States are going to go up too."

Paralegal: I have to ask, is there any reason you just stopped paying your bills?
Me: Um, well I used to be a journalist. It's a dying industry, you know.
Paralegal: Uh-huh.
Me: But I got out of that racket. Now I have a "real job." So anyway, I've been thinking about this credit crunch, and I'd really like to do my part to help you financial institutions out, but I can't pay it off in full. But, like, if I pay half of this off now, and half next month, what can you do for me?
Paralegal: I was just about to offer you; if you pay it off now, I can knock off $2,000 and you'll be paid in full.
Me: But I can't pay it off all now. I can only pay half.
Paralegal: Uh, okay, well, let me ask.
Me: Thanks!
Paralegal: Okay, done!

Looking Good At CNBC (And Pretty, Too)
[Washington Post]

Category: The Capital, for $100 A: In 1989 hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators were killed by the military at Tiananmen Square in this capital. Q: Maria buzzes in and makes a face for five seconds. A five second face, to her dismay, is incorrect. Armed with a functioning buzzer, Maria prepares to actually verbalize a question next time.

Great Moments In Financial History: The Money Honey On Celebrity Jeopardy [DealBreaker]

Completely blank! Are you fucking kidding us? Her name is Bambi Francisco, she looks like the subtly kinky bookworm older sister of Tila Tequila, her "investor" wrote a book dissing the pursit of diversity at Stanford (translation: he has an Asian fetish!) and there is no sex involved? Why the fuck are you writing about it? More Bartiromo-esque innuendo, please. Get to work, Valleywag!

Columnist Quits MarketWatch, Will Focus On Web Venture [New York Times]
Why I started Vator.tv, and Why I'm Leaving Marketwatch [Marketwatch]
Related: What Exactly Is The Wall Street Journal Trying To Say? [Slate]

• Lazy and carb avoidance go together like bleu cheese and bacon! The prepared salad business ventures close to $3 billion. [WSJ]

• Forbes is launching a business magazine—for women! And to prove how seriously they take us as an audience, they've tapped the editor of Four Seasons Magazine to run it! [New York Post]

• A new business book examines the implications of private labels like H&M, Trader Joe's and Zara on "brands" like Ralph Lauren, Safeway and presumably, Tila Tequila [LA Times]

  It's a Win-Win-Win For the Gender! Flouting the conventional wisdom that Maria Bartiromo is the hottest woman on CNBC, a blogger is conducting a strange experiment to see who readers think is the real Money Honey. [Opposite George]

We are gay for Maria Bartiromo. Always have been. Even after she took that corporate jet to Shanghai and left all those poor bankers there so she could fly back with Todd alone. Even after we heard that someone else heard in Davos — haha, yeah, we actually know someone who goes to Davos! — that she was prego with Todd's baby. Even before we read what a great kisser she was as Jordached Catholic schoolgirl in Dyker Heights. And so it is with only the faintest twinge of our usual moral uprightness that we bid good fucking riddance to Jonathan Steinberg, the schlumpy spawn of some famous corporate raider from the eightiees that became Mr. Bartiromo in 2000. Steinberg apparently got so wracked with suspicion that his wife was cheating on him that he hired a detective. Who apparently had a January 23 issue of the Wall Street Journal couriered over pronto to Oblivious H!.

Why can't we summon the sympathy we ought for Jonathan Steinberg? Because if he really paid attention to Maria he might have noticed her distance before the the ethics officials of a fucking Wall Street investment bank fired her lover for screwing her? Because the ignorance of his vast fortune blinded him to the salient fact that his wife was not only hotter but more ambitious than him? Or because she, um, elevates the average IQ of a women-on-TV pool that now has to accomodate eight whole members of the Bad Girls Club?

Yeah, or it could be that she's just really super pretty. (Who do you think does her eyes??)

Just Asking [New York Post via Gawker]

The Maria-Todd Citi Saga [WSJ]