Carmichael says Sowell invited her to the house in April for a beer. They were upstairs talking, "and then he just clicked," Doss said. "I'm sitting on the corner of the bed and he just leaped up and came over and started choking me. He said, 'If you want to live, knock three times on the floor.' And I knocked on the floor." He made her lay on the bed and take her clothes off but didn't try to rape her. She fell asleep and when she woke up he acted like nothing had happened and she left. She didn't report the crime because she's done jail time on a drug charge and assumed the police wouldn't believe her. Her friend disappeared later that month and Doss believes she may be one of the 10 unidentified victims. • Brigitte Harris of New York is facing up to 15 years in prison for killing her father when she cut off his penis. She cooked his penis on the stove because she heard that John Bobbitt's penis had been reattached, but said she didn't mean to kill him. She says her father had been raping her since she was 3 and she decided to take action because she was afraid he was about to do the same to her nieces. "Thinking back now, I definitely would have tried to put my resources into getting him put in jail," she said. "But I thought that people weren't going to believe me." • In Florida a 7-month old baby who was reported missing by her mother was found five days later in a box under her babysitter's bed. The mother, Chrystina Lynn Mercer, had asked babysitter Susan Elizabeth Baker to permanently take custody of the girl but didn't say why. The babysitter had written to Governor Charlie Christ over the summer asking him to help the baby because her father shook her and mother did drugs in front of her. • A guard at a "black jail" in China plead guilty to raping a 21-year-old detainee. Human rights groups say many people who come to Beijing to air complaints ignored by local authorities are rounded up by provincial officials who are worried the complaints will get them in trouble. The government still denies these "black jails" exist and the term was not mentioned in the trial. • Canadian researchers have found that oral contraceptives may benefit women with asthma. Women with asthma who were not taking birth control pills had lower exhaled nitric oxide levels, whcih is a marker of airway inflammation, than women who were on the pill. • Doctors are now injecting botox into women's chest muscles to tighten sagging cleavage. British cosmetic surgeon Sach Mohan said: "A young woman who has recently been pregnant might not have very much in her wardrobe that fits. But she is under pressure to look good just weeks after giving birth. This is another tool in their armory." • Between 20,000 and 40,000 women in the United States are allergic to their husband's sperm. Within half an hour of unprotected sex an allergic woman can develop hives, swollen eyes, diarrhea, and breathing difficulties. The condition can be treated and it's even possible for couple's to have children with a doctor's help. • The National Assembly in Pakistan has passed a bill calling for harsher punishment for sexually harassing women. Under the new bill, which will now go to the senate, the punishment for sexual harassment will be three years in jail and a fine of $6,000. Now the maximum punishment is one year in prison and an unspecified fine. • Gay marriage activists are blaming the failure of Maine's gay marriage law in Tuesday's election on scare-mongering ads and President Obama's failure to speak out in favor of the law. "President Obama missed an opportunity to state his position against these discriminatory attacks with the clarity and moral imperative that would have helped in this close fight," said Evan Wolfson of the national advocacy group Freedom to Marry. "The anti-gay forces are throwing millions of dollars into various unsubtle ads aimed at scaring people, so subtle statements from the White House are not enough." • The defeat of same-sex marriage in Maine has inspired anti-gay marriage activists in New Hampshire to draft legislation that would repeal the state's recently-passed law allowing gay marriage and put the issue to a vote again. • A USA Today/Gallup poll of potential Republican voters in 2012 found that 71% would "seriously consider" voting for Mike Huckabee, with Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin tying for second place. • While 65 percent of Republicans in the same poll said that they would consider voting for Sarah Palin, only 58 percent said she was qualified to be president. • San Francisco has banned the declawing of cats. Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, chief sponsor of the legislation, said, "It is well documented and well understood from a medical perspective that it is torture; it is a form of animal cruelty." •

According to Time's James Poniewozik, Palin's appearance follows some disagreement in Oprah's camp over whether to invite Palin on the show. But whatever arguments existed appear to have fallen by the wayside now that Palin's "not running for anything" — yet. If she does choose to run in 2012, she may have some difficult work ahead of her. Newsweek's Holly Bailey reports that since Palin resigned as governor and stopped making public appearances, her favorability rating has dipped to 40% — the lowest since McCain announced her as his running mate. And her popularity among independents has fallen to 41%, from 48% at the beginning of the campaign.

Among Republicans, the Palin picture is similarly bleak. 69% of them still like her, but only 18% think she should be their party's candidate for president in 2012. For comparison, 29% would most like to see Mike Huckabee run. And 21% say Palin is the person they'd least like to see on the ticket. On Republicans' least-wanted list, she trails only Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Bailey writes that "stepping back from the fray a bit can help, but in the end, it's ultimately about message" and that "to have a chance in 2012, Palin needs people to take her seriously." Going on Oprah may help. Probably not as useful: the December 2 convocation she's slated to give at the College of the Ozarks, which Wonkette calls "perhaps the only (presumably?) accredited college in America that fancies going by a comically trademarked focus group slogan, 'Hard Work U.,' instead of its much more lamentable real name." Lamentable or not, the event's already sold out.

Oprah To Interview Palin [Time: Tuned In Blog]
Time Out Of The Spotlight Hasn't Helped Sarah Palin [Newsweek: Gaggle Blog]
‘Sarah Palin Convocation' Tickets At Random College Sell Out [Wonkette]

So, yes, Hillary Clinton is speaking about her nomination and the Obama Administration's views on a variety of important foreign policy issues, all of which have been vetted up the wazoo by the incoming Administration so if you were expecting to hear something unscripted, you mostly have to listen to the Code Pink people in the audience who keep slipping up on the whole "being quiet" thing but haven't yet been kicked out. I also saw Andrea Mitchell in the flesh, but despite recognizing her, she didn't seem to recognize me. I'm attributing that to the fact that I am wearing my hair up. Anyway, it's pretty clear she's going to get grilled on Gaza and donations to the Clinton Foundation which should totally not be boring except when it will be.

In what is totally not an effort to make up for the Rick Warren thingie, the Inaugural Committee announced that the openly homosexual Episcopal New Hampshire bishop V. Gene Robinson will be giving the invocation at the opening event of the whole inaugural clusterfuck on Sunday, just before Beyoncé takes the stage and tells the world that if he likes he, he shoulda put a ring on it. And, although like too many people on YouTube Mike Huckabee, like, totally taught himself that dance he is not pro-gay. His colleague in non-gay Republican-ness, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell knows that if he ever felt like wanted a dude to bend him over, he would totally resist the urge to take it up the ass.

Speaking of taking it up the ass, Harry Reid still ain't shitting right after Roland Burris bent him over despite the parts where he seems like he's quite possibly insane and was nominated by a guy that just got impeached. If Roland Burris can out maneuver Harry Reid, what the hell hope does Reid have of out-maneuvering the Republicans?

In the mean time, Obama is planning on reversing some of Bush's more torturrific executive orders next week. Obama is getting so popular that even North Korea wanted to attend the Inauguration, but I think that was the plot of the sequel to Team America World Police so it's not going to happen. Also not happening? Obama's tax credit for new jobs that he promised during the campaign, but he is promising the stimulus won't be sexist, so there's that at least.

And while New York Governor David Paterson might or might not be violating open government laws by not speaking about who he's thinking about nominating for Hillary's seat, no one cares because Meghan McCain isn't talking about Sarah Palin. Apparently, a catfight is still more interesting to most people than a Senate seat.

• The Bushes spent about $3.7 million dollars on real estate in a pricey Dallas neighborhood, and boy, are you going to seethe with jealousy when you see the house the Presidency can buy you. [Washington Post, The Smoking Gun]
• Italy is struggling with a rise in puppy smuggling due to a love of specific breeds and a declining economy. More than 70,000 puppies are smuggled into Italy every year, despite the fact that nearly a quarter of them die on the way and half die within a few months of arrival. There's a video. [BBC]
• Pastor Rick Warren says the Bible calls us to invade Iran. I don't think it says what he thinks it says, but that might be because I read it for my own edification and not to use it to make zillions of dollars or justify my existence. [Washington Independent]

• The recently-published jury instructions in the Lori Drew case make it more clear why she didn't get convicted of any felony counts. [Wired]
• Fred Thompson recently promised that he was getting out of politics and going back to acting. He lied to you. [Time]
• Conservative scribe and Earl of Minor Despair Bob Novak would totally out Valerie Plame again because the media was mean to him after his did so the first time. [Think Progress]
• Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee doesn't think enough LGBT people have been beaten or killed while seeking equality in this country to qualify as a civil rights movement. Also, he thinks if they would just quit choosing to have teh buttsecks, they could have all the rights they ever wanted. [Think Progress]
• Some wacky Republicans who probably spend a portion of their time bitching about tort reform and vexatious litigation are filing lawsuits upon lawsuits about Barack Obama's birth certificate because blah blah blah crazytown nonsense. [Honolulu Advertiser]
• Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, she of the horror of women who don't always wear stockings, is going to challenge Texas Governor Rick Perry in the 2010 gubernatorial primary because she doesn't think he's Republican-y enough. [Dallas Morning News]
• Sarah Palin is totally snubbing Oprah, because Real Americans would definitely go talk to Larry King first. [Huffington Post]
• Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, with an assist from Governor General Michaëlle Jean, has shut down the Canadian Parliament to keep from being thrown out of office. And here you were all worried that George W. Bush was going to be the one to try to upend the democracy he supposedly serves. [NY Times]

MEGAN: You know what sucks most of all about this? Getting up at 7:50 am is being "late."

JASON: Ha. Yes. Central Time.

MEGAN: Or Mountain Time. Or just, I want to sleep in one. single. day. Anyway, so, Denver. Republicans. Palin. Opinions?

JASON: Well, in the first place with Palin, we can see two things. One, she's fantastically unqualified to be vice-president. Two, what she lacks in qualification she makes up for in sheer raw talent. So she has almost nothing to add to the McCain ticket, and, indeed, the returns will begin to diminish almost as soon as the lights go out tonight. But she has a bright future.

MEGAN: I mean, I was sitting there last night going, why is being a community organizer a bad thing? 4 years ago or 8 years ago, wasn't the GOP all into charitable works? Making up for smaller government through private charity? How does that service to one's community, like, not count? Why was it boo-able?

JASON: I'm quite sure that Pat Buchanan was savagely beating himself off last night. He was back in his hotel room, moaning, "I'm like Ernest Borgnine! I'MA LIVE FOREVAH!"

MEGAN: Wow, that was a mental image I didn't need this early in the day. Mostly because I've spent this week surrounded by Pat Buchanans. If I didn't need to vomit when I got up, I sure as shit do now.

JASON: Yeah, I poured a lake of hot fire all over the constant slagging of community organizers last night. I want to point out to the Jezebel readership that on September 11, McCain and Obama are scheduled to appear at a forum on community service and volunteerism. Call their organizers. Let em know what McCain thinks about them. What did you think of Palin? Are you feeling it? Ready to do some aerial wolf hunting?

MEGAN: I mean, the roars in the audience were wild, for real, like, I know I was in the press booth at Invesco and couldn't hear them that well, but the Republicans loved her. Also, in a way I couldn't see, apparently, staffers were trying to give Giuliani the hook when he started to run over and he ignored them, bumping the end of Palin's speech out of prime time. Way to ingratiate yourself, Rudy!

JASON: Yeah, they had to scrap a video montage that was supposed to introduce Palin. Rudy ran over, but the real culprit has to be these three days of substantial schedule changes. No one seems to know which way is up. It's strange, because this convention seems to have taken on the strange, improvisational aspect of the McCain campaign itself, where every morning is a new opportunity to reinvent the goddamned wheel. Yesterday, though, they had much better raw material. Rudy and Palin get the highest marks from me, for grilling up that caribou and serving it bloody. It was a night where even a shitty Romney speech played well, because of the wet, flappy fart that Lieberman laid down the night before. Frankly, I'd be stunned if McCain does as well tonight. I mean, the audience will be its fullest and will be generous with the clapter, but his arrival on the scene last night was sort of comical. Palin was probably thinking, "Hey! John McCain and stuff! We were sorta doing okay without you!"

MEGAN: Actually, Romney's speech played pretty well live, Lieberman or no Lieberman, it was the first really good speech I've seen him give. Much like Thompson, if he hadn't been so stiff and boring during the campaign, McCain might not being the nominee. But, really, I can disagree with its content, but Palin gave a great rabble-rousing, roof-raising speech last night. Not that it's going to shut anyone up about the scandals. And you should've seen the standing ovation and heard the live cheering when she introduced Bristol. It was a little ironically amusing to watching the hard-core GOPers applaud teenage motherhood.

JASON: Yeah. Last night, I saw Judith Nathan stand up and applaud the concept of the Palin's lasting marriage, and I thought, "Wow! That must be so WEIRD for her!"

MEGAN: Man, the shit you miss watching it live! I would've been dying! But, the thing I sort of wondered is whether she's ever going to talk about anything besides abortion and oil. Like, there are other issues in America today, right?

JASON: Well, McCain has only got so many issues! There's SURGE! And now "Drill, Baby, Drill!" (blame the inept Michael Steele for entering that attack-ad ready phrase into the lexicon) And uhm...what else...there's Paying Lip Service To The Environment. And earmark reform. After that, it is pretty much straight Bush/Cheney. The injection of abortion gets the base motivated, but I don't think Maverick's going to really hype that issue. Palin might, but significantly, the topic was never broached in her speech last night, either. Palin was like, "We're going to lay some pipe!" Which is pretty porny! The guy who comes to fix the White House's copy machines would be in for a real treat in the McCain-Palin White House! And then there'd by John and Cindy's Anger-Banging!

MEGAN: I mean, I was waiting during the policy portion of her speech for her to talk about something other than energy... and then she didn't.

JASON: There was a "policy portion?"

MEGAN: Oh, God, there are so many sex jokes to be made at the GOP convention, it's hard to even know where to begin. Well, the energy thing was the policy portion. I know that because I stopped paying attention and got a little bored. That's usually my clue.

JASON: Do you think Levi The Defiler (I'm flat stealing that term from a friend) got any ass last night? What was the post-Palin mood like. He was chomping that gum like a motherfucker up there on that stage!

MEGAN: The women around me in the press box agreed (prior to his arrival on stage) that he was pretty cute. And I'll bet Palin makes them stay in different rooms despite everything.

JASON: Dude was just an Alaskan redneck poonhound 48 hours ago. Now he's on the airport tarmac having the sacred union of his DNA and Bristol's ova consecrated by the Geezer King. That's a lot to absorb.

MEGAN: But, as for the mood, I'll bet a lot of Republican girls got laid last night, if they weren't clinging to their purity rings. People were super-jazzed after the speech, especially the men I chatted with. Luckily, it was concert night for the RNC, so between the Charlie Daniels Band and Daughtry, I wasn't obligated to talk to anyone. I did chat for a second with Matt Cooper, though.

JASON: And how was Matt Cooper? I guess?

MEGAN: He was nice, he didn't even mention that I didn't look as stupidly sunburned as when we were introduced at Invesco. Anyway, so, do you think Palin hurts or helps McCain? I think her nomination and the controversy — as Mike Huckabee said — served to solidify his nomination and jazz up the base. So it's a way better idea than Lieberman, who's still limper than John McCain's penis.

JASON: Well, Palin's going to help rile up the base, but I'm of the same mind as Mike Murphy — both his on-camera and accidentally caught on a live mike persona — in that this year may not be a "base" election. He said on Sunday that he'd rather have MORE voters this year than HAPPY voters. I think he's right! And I think Palin played really poorly with independent voters — who Obama's already made some significant gains in the polls with since the DNC — and if McCain doesn't offer something of substance besides DRILL WAR HERO ISN'T MY VEEP HOT TO TROT SURGE MY FRIENDS MAVERICK, he may not make any inroads there. Palin's had a big splash, but her ability to "help" McCain is going to be limited, because she's going in dry dock, won't be giving pressers from what I hear, and sooner or later, it's going to get back to Obama and McCain.

MEGAN: How ironic would it be if after all this talk of how mean and sexist we all are, they stick her in a closet until the VP debate?

MOE: So should we slog through the Veeps today? is anything else happening?
MEGAN: Yeah, we can start with veeps, want to go Dem or Republican firsties?
MOE: I'm sending you TNR. I will admit to having not read long past Ed Rendell, but I'm calling it up again.

MEGAN: Yeah, I sadly read all of those this weekend, including David Frum's bullshit piece on "how" McCain should choose a Veep (hint: even the ones that don't win go on to be President some day, what a terrible thought) and that ends with this gem:

I have my own personal nomination for vice president for McCain. It's Rudy Giuliani, precisely because he shares the vision of a practical, reforming, war- winning Republican Party that inspires John McCain, plus the stronger-than- usual grounds for hoping that he might be the rare candidate who can make a difference in an essential state—in this case, New Jersey.

MEGAN: The fact that I continued reading the rest of the profiles after that is a sign of my dedication to our readers, for real. Wetlands was less perverse.
MOE: I'm actually reading Frum's piece now. Uhhhh, news you can't use: Garrett Hobart was William McKinley's VP…something something C-Span, VP candidates never deliver voters…blah.

MEGAN: Right. And let's get that Giuliani guy back. Barf.
MOE: Also, how did Mike Bloomberg get on "both Barack Obama and John McCain's vice-presidential shortlists"? Is this true?
MEGAN: I think that's bullshit.
MEGAN: Obama needs a New Yorker? Please. I mean, Bloomie spent 5 minths trying to gin up enough national press to get enough name recognition to make a run at it and couldn't manage. The last thing McCain needs with social conservations already starting to defect is to put a non-Zell Miller, non-Joe Lieberman former Democrat from New York City on the ticket.
MOE: I like this lede re Huck Yeah:

If the first rule of picking a running mate is to risk as little harm to the ticket as possible, then Mike Huckabee shouldn't be John McCain's first choice for veep—or his second, third, or fourth, for that matter.

He is the GOP equivalent of Ed Rendell! Although Ed could probs use some of his dieting tips. And you can file the rest of this piece into "Quirky pol derangedly beloved by numerous members of the media, who have filed away several hundred thousand words of anecdote — and travel expenses — that will go to waste if editors don't redeem this "possible VP" angle in critical pre-Convention window of time.

MEGAN: But didn't you hear? He saved someone's life this weekend. He's obviously ordained by God or something. He's the actual Messiah. What has Obama ever done?
MOE: Um

“I’m glad that Mike was in the right place at the right time and continued to lead by example,” former South Carolina Lt. Gov. candidate Mike Campbell told The Palmetto Scoop. “We all know that [Huckabee] is pro-life, and once again he has lived up to it.”
The newspaper noted that Pittenger apparently suffers from acid reflux, which likely caused the incident to occur. It added that Huckabee, who is also known for losing 110 pounds and promoting healthy living, was trained as an EMT in college and this may not be the first time he’s sprung to action when needed.

Are they subtly suggesting a little experience with bulimia might have saved a life?

MOE: Also, Pawlenty. The thing is called "Extreme Makeover," it addresses his "proletarian chic," and you can't see it on the site, but in print it's adorned by a picture that just makes you think: that is a rather aristocratic nose on that guy.
MOE: But genes can be so deceiving! He likes to perform "headlocks" and go to bars and such.

Pawlenty will be the first presidential running mate to have worn a mullet into middle age.

MOE: Oh my god, and more on the hair.

At 47, he is lean and vigorous, with plush brown hair.

MOE: Plush?
MEGAN: Dude, it's Minnesota. Of course he's all down home like. I love, however, where he's drinking: at an American Legion Hall. The first bar I ever spent any time at at the tender age of 16 was a VFW bar and I am pretty sure they would've served me but I didn't drink and I had to drive home from there but it was shady, dude.
MEGAN: Anyone else think Noam has a man crush on Pawlenty?
MOE: Did you read the Vanity Fair man crush piece? I was going to post on it later. I hate trend pieces that are accurate.
MEGAN: I didn't, but if we're gonna talk man crushes, we should probably talk about Jim Webb now.
MEGAN: Except that the TNR piece is written by a woman. Goddammit, ruins my joke. Oh, well.
MOE: One thing, btw, I totally do not understand is how the "Axis of Arugula" enemies over at Fox News have remained so oblivious to how thorougly their beloved blue collar culture has totally been co-opted by the elite. The American Legion is like, the epicenter of the scene!

MEGAN: Because the Enemies of Arugula are too busy dining at [insert name of trendy NYC eatery here] to bother checking out the American Legion or VFW bar, not that they could get in because you generally have to be a vet or a friend of a vet and, well, you know. Fox News.
MOE: Like right wing blogger Dorothy King re her Obamaconservatism, who is referenced in a Bartlett piece:

Do I now, as a newly minted Obamaphile liberal elitist, have to serve my guests Chablis? Or would any old chardonnay do? Must it be arugula for the salad; or would lamb's lettuce, dandelion and little gems in hazelnut oil be okay? What about desert? I had planned to make a chocolate soufflé cake. But baking ... are Obamacons allowed to bake, or is that too conservative?

Um, Dorothy: if you really want to pass for bleeding-heart, cupcakes and Pabst! Pretend like you're in Kansas. Ohhhhh, bad pun. Srsly though.

MOE: I didn't even know chablis was supposedly nicer than chardonnay. I just buy this shit by the price point.
MEGAN: Also, wait, isn't Hillary the feminist candidate? Isn't Hillary the one who doesn't bake?
MEGAN: Chablis is like what people drank in the 70s. And it's sweeter. Chardonnay is the new Chablis, it's what people buy when they don't know what to buy or drink or even what they like.
MEGAN: It's 90% mass market, dumbed down, oaked-up crap that people think they're supposed to like.
MEGAN: Wow, I think I might have stronger opinions about wine than I do about VPs. Especially if that VP is Sam Nunn. Boooring. Also not gonna happen.
MOE: That's totes what I thought. Like, chablis was advertised in all those old Cosmos Anna got for us this one time. Regardless, you notice how the last desperate shreds of this phony elitism-populism thing are sort of a theme of this issue? Hence the Jim Webb hardon:

He embodies the liberal fantasy laid out by Thomas Frank in What's the Matter With Kansas?: that blue-collar whites will stop being mad at liberals for frowning at their guns and start being mad at conservatives for raping their pocketbooks.

MOE: Here's the link.

MEGAN: Blue collar white semi-conservatives might well get mad about their pocketbooks, but they vote with our uteri. I mean, they don't vote with their own because they don't have them or would totes never get an abortion, not that they would talk about, anyway. Guns for all, abortions for none! And fuck the economy, that's the Democrats' fault.
MOE: Like, personally, I am liberal as fuck, and my dad is a conservative, and he has fine tastes and reads the classics and knows about wine and shit, and I am the one who clocks in at 7:30 after grabbing an egg sandwich and a Post, and I guess that's how it should be?
MEGAN: Well, I'm not quite as liberal as you I'd say, but I know about wine! And I read the classics. Sometimes. The last book I read the whole way through was The Master and Marguerita and I swear I'm gonna finish Crime and Punishment and Baal and Amerika and Tropic of Cancer this year. I swear. But I won't be voting for McCain, that's for sure.
MOE: Oh my god I just saw that joke in the Gchat screen lolol. Readers, why don't you decide?

Megan: dude. i need an opinion whether I should write this.: Wait, dude, there's an even more horrible takeaway joke from Dorothy: She's trying to say that a world with Obama is a world without chocolate. is that past the line?

No lady, I'm just drooling right now and I'm not sure why…
MEGAN: Fine, I'll bake cupcakes next time I visit. Chocolate ones. Soufflé doesn't travel well.

MEGAN: Ok, we keep getting distracted by other stuff, so let me give the run down on VP as I see it and I'm sure I'll be wrong because I always am about these things, but whatever.
MOE: Um, I'm interrupting the veepstakes magic 8 ball chat just a sec for an obligatory moment in Geraldine Ferraro, oy she is nuts.

Geraldine Ferraro dismissed the idea in a conversation with me last week - noting that these voters had already voted for an anti-abortion rights Republican before: Ronald Reagan. More, she said, these sophisticated voters know that Democrats will keep control of Congress no matter what, blocking any extremist nominees for the Supreme Court.

Oh yes that is some very sophisticated reasoning Ferraro! If by "sophisticated" you mean impenetrably self-sabotagingly warped!
MEGAN: Oh, right, like how the Dems blocked Alito and Roberts? Fucking a, like, she's literally trying out reasons for them not to vote Obama. WTF is wrong with her. Ok, back to veeps.

MEGAN: Republican: It's not going to be Huckabee, I'll bet he annoys McCain and he's no upside with the fiscal conservatives. McCain might swallow it and pick Romney. He won't take Crist (gay), he won't take Jindal (won't pass vetting, I'd bet), he can't take Rice (those naughty lesbian rumors and all).
MEGAN: Side note: John McCain's campaign has the most high-level gay staff and advisers of any campaign so far this year. Oh, and the Log Cabin Republicans who declined to endorse Bush twice, I have it on good authority, will endorse McCain despite his record on gay issues because he once voted against the federal marriage amendment. But he's still not going to take Crist.
MOE: Don't you think Rice's bigger problem is being, um, friends with Bush?
MEGAN: Not when he needs to appeal to Bush's voters. What, like she and he disagree on Iraq?
MOE: No, see: Bush doesn't have any more voters.
MOE: Seriously, I don't think Tom Davis was hyperbolizing.
MEGAN: Anyway, so I think Pawlenty's definitely on the short list. I think he's vetting Carly Fiorina in the press the way he did Rice.
MEGAN: I don't think he was hyperbolizing, either, but I think McCain's going to have to tack right now that Bob Barr's the libertarian, he's going to pick up $$ and voters.
MOE: And even if he did, it is not a prim black brainy Ferragamo-clad warmonger they were voting for.
MEGAN: And who's left on the right? The 27% of people or so that still actually support Bush, and you gotta know those people are not big McCainiacs.

MEGAN: Anyway, so the other thing that Attackerman were talking about this weekend that would probs make sense in McCain's warped mind was Lieberman. And that would be a pro-war, all-war ticket with this semblance of bipartisanship that I think would totally lose and Liebarman's a shitty VP candidate so that's the one I'm sort of rooting for.

MOE: You know, we never hit Rendell, but the lede is all you need. Rendell is appearing at a rally with Louis Farrakhan. Buzz Bissinger is a city hall reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer following Rendell for six years because he thinks municipal politicians will actually be able to learn something from the experience of Philadelphia or something.

I was writing a book on Rendell at the time. Allowed into his inner sanctum for close to six years, I found Rendell's stance on Farrakhan important and was eager to hear what he had been thinking during the rally. He did not disappoint: "As I sat there, I said to myself, 'Wouldn't it be great if someone burst in and gunned me down, because then Buzz would at least have an ending to his book.'"

MEGAN: Oh, great, just with this campaign needs, two people who the Republicans can associate with Louis Farrakhan. Also, Rendell got on TV last week and said unequivocally (unlike the rest of the Veepstakes candidates) that he doesn't want the gig because he doesn't like working for other people or trying to spin shit.
MOE: So dude, do you think it will be Jim Webb? And if so, does that mean we have to read his books?
MEGAN: I think if it is, we do, but I don't think it will be. I'm sure he's on the short list, but how do they take a 1st term Senator (from a state where the seat might swing back) with no domestic policy experience who is a former Republican with a shitty record on women's issues and make him Obama's VP in this climate?
MOE: Little known fact: Anna's dad is apparently obsessed with Scot-Irish history. And all I know of the climate is that it is hot. And that fucking Geraldine Ferraro is voting for McCain anyway.
MEGAN: A month ago, sure, I can see him topping out the list, no doubt, but I think the surging supposed feminists (I'm sorry, I ain't calling anyone who is threatening to vote for McCain or write-in Hillary to turn the election over to him an actual feminist) who are pissed at Obama over sexism in the media and among some of his supposed supporters makes it much less likely.
MEGAN: But I think he's on the short list. I know Clinton is, though I'm on record as being confused why she'd give up power in the Senate for what is basically a powerless ceremonial role (And HRC-as-VP people, don't give me "VP is head of the Senate" crap, because that's not how it works, Cheney casts a tie-breaking vote once in a blue and doesn't have any actual power in the institution, look it up, thanks).
MEGAN: McCaskill's seat could go red, my Steve mentioned Landrieu but that's the same deal, ditto Klobuchar. Napolitano hates McCain and would totally attack him, which is good, Sebelius for sure. I'm still feeling like Feingold could be a dark horse but am constantly told that he's too liberal (which is actually the point of taking him), Tim Kaine wants it but he has weird eyebrows. Edwards doesn't, Richardson is grabby with the ladies and, fuck it, he really should just announce a shadow cabinet because there's be someone in there for everyone in the Democratic party and no one would be able to vote against every major Democratic figure.

• So, like, do you ever read the little box at the beginning of every issue of the Economist where it explains that the magazine was "first published in 1843 to take part in "a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress." I don't know why that came to mind today (it's been awhile since I, uh, tried to take part in that game!) but...
  
• Today 300 students at Washington University in St. Louis protested the school's baffling bestowal of an honorary degree on Phyllis Schlafly. [STL Today]
  
• About whom the best the local paper can say, "she's no Robert Mugabe." [STL Today]
  
• And who once, in words that surely could have inspired our president's insinuations before the Israel Knesset yesterday, said: "The delusion that America can be defended by treaties instead of by weapons is the most persistent and pernicious of all liberal fallacies." [TNR]
  
• And also said (just this week): "Feminists, if they get tired of a husband or if they want to fight over child custody, they can make an accusation of marital rape and they want that to be there, available to them." [Feministing]

• And yeah, uh, Mike Huckabee + National Rifle Association + incomprehensible Barack Obama assassination joke = "audience laughter." [DailyKos]
• Barack Obama tells David Brooks "there are rarely purely ideological movements out there. We can encourage actors to think in practical and not ideological terms. We can strengthen those elements that are making practical calculations." And David Brooks...rescinds his assertion that Obama is living in Chomskyland! [NYT]
• "Running as an incumbent, as the inevitable candidate, was probably our biggest mistake, particularly in a time when the country is really hungry for change." That and like 76 other reasons the Clinton campaign was a failure, by the Clinton campaign staff. [TNR]

• The Sichuan earthquake has probably killed 9,000 people, and let 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia out into the streets, but if I know you guys it's the panda stuff that is really going to get to you. [Wash Post]
  
• But — thanks investment banks! — it probably won't have that big an impact on the economy! [WSJ]
  
• Or Beijing's standing as the number one toilet metropolis. [Xinhua]
  
• Meanwhile in Burma the UN is projecting a death toll of 100,000, and Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon can't get junta leader Than Shwe on the phone so he actually just sent a letter, and the US is still trying to get them to accept aid at all...[Wash Post]
  
• Hillary is going to win the white vote by landslide margins in West Virginia because they're still coming to grips with the notion of the first Muslim president down there. [FT]
  
• Well it's about time Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson vowed lifelong commitment.[US Weekly]

• Our favorite place Yemen made the Foreign Policy list of five most dangerous food crises, but North Korea beat it out for number one. [FP]
• John McCain does not plan on sticking around for the ice caps to melt but remember he has young children and sometimes even the capacity for independent thought. [NYT]
• Which may sound radical but that's what Huckabee's there for. [US News]
• If you think you can take advantage of the crap economy just by getting in on a payday loan business, well, you sort of can. [WSJ]
• America steadfastly refuses to forget how comprehensively shitty the Bush Administration has been. [Wash Post]

Image via Young Manhattanite

MEGAN: I had a dream the night before last that Dolly Parton was having a three-way with two guys on a helicopter maneuvering to escape enemy fire. And I was watching. What does this say about our psyches?

MOE: That's a rhetorical question right? Good.

MEGAN: Yeah, I don't want to know either

MOE: So let's see. I sort of feel like it's a snow day because Obama's turnout in Indiana actually kept rising after I fell asleep. Also, I'm taking off the rest of the day so there is that. And because I've been watching Fox I've been hearing nothing but "Clinton is going to pull through, she's our girl; she's a working class hero; he's arugula-class Hegel" blah blah so this was really fun. Last night Shep Smith was outright rolling his eyes dramatically at anyone who said she still had a chance.

MEGAN: Shep does a lot of things very dramatically

MOE: Unrelated: Michelle and the persimmon color: hot! I wanted Shep to weigh in on that but he didn't.

MEGAN: I switched channels around 10:30 or so when they did a whole piece on McCain and conservative judges and I couldn't take it anymore.
MEGAN: Yes, actually, I liked the colors of both Michelle's and Hillary's outfits last night. I particularly appreciated Hillary's jewelry choice for once.
MOE: OH I don't notice jewelry because I don't really do jewelry — I'd say because I am trying to do that whole "urbane tomboy aesthetic" thing but actually just because I will lose it — what did it look like?
MEGAN: It was like, simple and silver, rather than a huge chunky thing. Check it out.
MOE: Even Fox & Friends, which this morning was like "It's a big day for Obama, it's a big day for Hillary; it's a big deal for the host of Fox & Friends because it's his birthday..." Uh, happy birthday right wing conspiracy!
MEGAN: Doocey? If you emerged fully formed from the gaping mouth of hell, do you get to call that day your birthday?
MOE: Oh my god right now on Fox News they're blowing their outrage wad on the fact that some American Idol contestant last night didn't remember the words to the Byrds song he was performing. HOW COULD HE NOT REMEMBER THE WORDS TO THAT SONG IT'S LIKE THE FUCKING NATIONAL ANTHEM FOR CHRISSAKE.
MEGAN: Hey, it's no Proud to Be an American.
MOE: AAAAAH
8:45 AM
MEGAN: Sorry, couldn't resist. I didn't watch American Idol because the future of our democracy was at stake or some shit.
MOE: Okay now there are lots of kids on the Fox & Friends. The guy whose birthday it is is Brian. He has a Goodfellas unsinister bad guy face. And now here's Mike Huckabee! And he's chastising Brian for having such a big birthday cake!!! Is this what happens when Fox is temporarily forced to try and clear its viewers' mental caches so they forget how forcefully they've all been claiming things were the way they provably as of yesterday aren't?
MOE: Hey, here's a birthday cake! Here's a folksy governor! Here's some protest music! Kiddies!
MEGAN: Is there a clown?
MOE: Is there a clown...
MEGAN: I know! I was trying to throw you a joke softball.
MEGAN: Have you ever watched all of Obama's surrogates on TV and wonder why they are all so Midwesternly white?
MEGAN: (Sorry, some communications guy just came on MSNBC and he looks like a young Karl Rove only without the red glowing eyes)
MOE: I told you I don't have sound.
MOE: On my other news stations.
MOE: They haven't really had many Obama surrogates on Fox.
MOE: I'm switching to CNBC. Let's see what the market is saying about this.
MEGAN: Ah, ok. Well, they are. It's like they're coming to all of us and being like, no, it's cool, he has white friends. I'm honestly trying to remember a senior campaign official of his or national surrogate who is a person of color.
MOE: Oooh, weird, the first commercial was for something called Salesgenie.com and it is entirely in Mandarin.
MEGAN: Ok, so, the markets have decided that none of us have any money to buy anything anyway? Great.
MEGAN: I mean, in my case it's true, but still.
MOE: That's true I can't think of any black Obama surrogates. I feel like I've seen other minorities but not black surrogates and that's a very salient thing that hasn't been pointed out. I'm thinking this was incredibly calculated and it's entirely to blame for the entire Jeremiah Wright Al Sharpton rage thing. And maybe that is why this Wright scandal didn't cast the terrible "shadow" all the headlines were saying it would cast. Because if there is one thing I have learned recently it's that Boomer Fatigue is not just something White People Like. It's color bline.
MOE: blind
MEGAN: Ok, so, we could talk about something else because I totally have primary fatigue. Hey, look, Putin's buttboy/puppet just got inaugurated in Russian. That's vaguely interesting.

MOE: Sorry I had to get the door
MEGAN: No worries, I just thought you thought Russia was boring. The new guy is cute for a dictator.

MOE: We've discussed how Medvedev was sort of Putin's protege at school, when Putin was a KGB agent...but he was really a narc...I know we've discussed him before. Oh yeah and he's the former chairman of Gazprom. In other news Burma accepted storm aid.
MEGAN: Now just let's hope that the junta can keep their sweaty palms off of it, though I'm not that hopeful on that point.
MOE: Perhaps we should incorporate the sassy exchange from last night's CNN that a reader just implored us to excerpt.

So stop the divisions. Stop trying to split us into these groups,
Paul, because you and I know both know we have been in more campaigns.
We know how Democrats win and to simply suggest that Hillary's coalition
is better than Obama's, Obama's is better than Hillary's — no. We have
a big party, Paul.

BEGALA: That's right.

BRAZILE: Just don't divide me and tell me I cannot stand in
Hillary's camp because I'm black, and I can't stand in Obama's camp
because I'm female. Because I'm both.

BEGALA: That's — Donna -

BRAZILE: And I'm wealthy so I might go with McCain and sit with
Bill Bennett, Paul.

BENNETT: That's funny.

BRAZILE: Don't start with me, baby.

MEGAN: Ooh, by the way, the AP is just now reporting that Hillary loaned herself another $6.4 million in the last month, in addition to the $5 million she never paid back.
MEGAN: Despite the $10 million she raised in 2 hours after Pennsylvania
MOE: Yeah apparently she said something along the lines of, "Forget post-racial, the Clinton argument has become post-rational."
MOE: And then there was that amazing appendage comment.
MEGAN: The appendage comment?
MOE: It's referenced here. Regarding the math. You know: Well, if she manages to reason with all the superdelegates, and wins 72% of the delegates in the remaining races, and engineers some strategy whereby Michigan and Florida take on Obama before the Supreme Court, and Operation Chaos ramps up, then she can still... And then some dude was like "And if my aunt had a male appendage, she'd be my uncle."
MEGAN: Oh, right. Also, Hillary needs 72% or so of the remaining vote to retake the pledged delegate lead including Florida and Michigan, according to MSNBC.

MOE: Is this why we are finding this boring now?
MOE: I mean, he couldn't have had a more negative news week.
MOE: Oh shit, and PEGGY NOONAN WAS RIGHT AGAIN
MEGAN: Obama? I mean, I suppose it could come out that he beat someone or had gay tendencies or something, but barring that, it wasn't a good news week.

MEGAN: But I think the beneficial thing about the 24 hour news cycle is that eventually 95% of people tune out and nothing pundits say matter anyway, which is why most people are just happy to not hear about Reverend Wright anymore.

MOE: One thing I didn't quite understand that I learned from the New York Post is that last night Obama picked up 69 delegates to Hillary's 63, which seemed...uh...a little off. But I don't do math.
MEGAN: In North Carolina?
MEGAN: No, I think that's just wrong.

MEGAN: CNN says Obama picked up 64 in NC and 38 in Indiana, and Hillary got 44 and 41, respectively. I can't do math, but I think the NYP is wrong.
MOE: that's 85 for hillary and 103 for obama
MOE: So yeah
MEGAN: Mere bloggers have proved actualy journalists wrong. The world might need to stop turning on its axis.

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.

[Classy imagery courtesy Shieldsnet.]

MEGAN: We should probably kick this off, but it's too close to Friday for me to care too much about pretty much anything.
MOE: The plot to kill the Dutch cartoonist for drawing Mohammed with a bomb in his turban and the ensuing saber-rattling — or you know, assault rifle-rattling — from Osama Bin Laden directed at Europe and the Pope (but not, curiously, Bush) doesn't interest you at all?
MOE: Because I have to say that is about the strangest fifth anniversary present you could give the Administration.
MOE: New OBL recording threatening Europe and calling the cartoons a worse offense than anything the good ol' US of A has ever done is kind of interested.
MEGAN: Insofar as it seems sort of batshit, but I did love his swipe at the Saudi king in there for being insufficiently pissed off about it.
MOE: Jesus Christ, fifty people died in the protests against the cartoons.
MEGAN: That's less than the last round of protests, though, right? So, like, progress?
MOE: I read something in Mike Huckabee looks positively fucking enlightened.
MEGAN: Wait, so they're gonna come here and start converting us? Good luck with us atheist types.
MOE: And speaking of which, it was met with some skepticism when I posted on this last night but Huck's Bin Laden video, if anyone's interested, annotated by someone who likes dissecting this sort of thing I suppose, and that person thinks it's a mashup using old audio. Which would make sense since the cartoon controversy is only like a million years old. I dunno. Now I can't find the Times story, but the best thing was how everyone had forgotten about it, and then the cartoonist was like, no seriously guys, they're really trying to kill me.
MOE: So, uh, onto more important issues! Hillary's schedule as First Lady. "Classic First Lady fare"? And maybe not such a great friend to Vince Foster? Can you believe that the first thing anyone in the media anyone bothered figuring out was where she was on Dia Del Dress??? Well yes, of course you can.
MEGAN: Nope, they're back protesting again. Who'd'a thunk that if you combine religion, grinding poverty, overarching patriarchy and the inability for men to achieve what they are told they ought that you'd get a bunch of mindless, repetitive violence aimed at forces beyond their control and directed by dudes who want power and prestige for themselves?
MEGAN: What I can't believe is that anyone ever thought that her schedule would be interesting!
MEGAN: Like, was there supposed to be an day where it was like "3:30: Illicit lesbian sex. 6:15: Shower 7:00: Dinner with illegal campaign donors 10:30: Kill Vince Foster 10:35: Initiate massive cover-up operation 10:45: Stop by Kathleen Willey's to kill cats."
MOE: Well, here's the thing. Just whyyyyyyy am I expected to believe she is so fucking experienced? Seriously? Tell me!
MEGAN: She is! She singlehandedly wrote all the good legislation ever passed in Congress during her husband's Administration AND negotiated all this really nice peacemaking stuff which is why she was totes to busy to notice things like NAFTA, the Defense of Marriage Act, welfare "reform" and the don't ask, don't tell policy. Plus the part where the government turned over all student loans to private lenders which is why that bloodsucking bitch Sallie Mae is riding your ass rather than the Department of Education (which is how it used to be).
MOE: I was about to say "you know what? Forget it. Don't answer that. Commenters will answer that." So anyway, we should probably address the issue of
MOE: sex and sex and sex... because that's what the readers want right?
MEGAN: Please, please, please, let us never again contemplate a photo shoot of Eliot Spitzer oiled, naked and with his erect cock in his hands. Please. I mean, I need to lose weight but I was always planning on being a drunkorexic and not a bulimic.
MOE: This is a pretty good story about Hillary's schedule, by the way.

And then, this note, and perhaps she was glad for the rare instance when the script left a line up to her discretion: "Upon conclusion of dinner, the President and First Lady have the first dance (optional)."

MEGAN: Dude, I do believe the dance is always optional, which sucks. My ex-bf and I danced a total of, like, 2 times in 4 years and I like to dance.
MOE: Yeah I don't think I really danced very much with my ex boyfriend but I like to dance by myself, on account of my very individualistic notion of "rhythm."
MEGAN: I'm not gonna pretend like I don't dance around my apartment singing along to crap that I drunkenly download from iTunes.

MOE: Clinton has apparently "doubled her lead" in Pennsylvania primary polls. You know what I love about stories like this? When they don't remind you what date the primary happens. Though they did take pains to say exactly when the polls were conducted, which was March 15 and 16, before the speech in Philadelphia. It is really hard for me to believe that speech did not help him in Pennsylvania. Perhaps because I am an irrational emotion-driven idealist, but whatevs.
MOE: Not sure if it helps or hurts Obama that Rev. Wright is a product of the Philadelphia public school system.
MOE: Hahaha Arlen Specter was on Stern yesterday. I have to fucking get Sirius. SRIUSLY!
MEGAN: I think she's taking PA, though. Other than the speech, it's drip drip drip on Obama all month. Today alone it that his campaign neglected to remove the blog of the New Black Panther Party from their site. The ADL identifies them as an extremist hate group because they're super Anti-Semetic. Plus, you know, it's being widely reported that he's standing between Michigan and a revote because he wants those people who voted in the Republican primary already (like, say, all those Dems that Kos told to vote for Romney) to be able to vote again which just completely fucks up his argument about fairness.
MEGAN: He was on Jon Stewart, too, all jowls and phlegmy laughs.
MOE: Yeah I haven't been paying attention to Michigan and/or Florida. I just want them to go away. It's like, oh Jesus Fuck, this is annoying. At this point I don't care who wins. I'm just glad he gave that speech. That's what a sucker I am. Plus I have to go now. So many things left undiscussed! Will we ever get into our debate re the future of the troop surge? Speaking of, interestingly, the Wash Post lead editorial today slams Obama and Clinton for their kind of delusion-heavy Iraq rhetoric, which is a pet peeve of mine.
MEGAN: I saw that, but decided to do Crappy Hour before reading it.
MOE: While David Broder calls McCain's Baghdad visit a "missed opportunity" — why I'm not totally sure. But I guess it all goes to show that even though we know our next president will not be a retard, he or she will not necessarily be able to solve anything. SIGH.
MEGAN: Hail to the motherfucking Chief.

• Obama's slightly racist grandma is not dead, she just doesn't feel like commenting on his speech apparently. Here is a picture of her clutching her grandson for fear of being beaten up by darker-skinned black men. No just kidding, it's just a graduation picture. Sorry to drag you into this, Madelyn Dunham.
  
• ""As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say 'That's a terrible statement!' ... I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I'm gonna be probably the only conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you — we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names..." Well Jesus F. Christ Mike Huckabee, if you didn't just win yourself some major days off from Purgatory right there. [Politico]
  
• John McCain keeps randomly linking Iran with Al Qaeda. I'd say he's trying to make this into a self-fulfilling prophecy like happened with Iraq and Al Qaeda so that he can make the 100 years thing its own self-fulfilling prophecy. But he could also be just old. [Huffington Post]
  
• Getting raped on Spring Break is just par for the course these days I guess, but getting raped and then hurled over a sixth-floor balcony is a bit much. [ABC News]
  
• Hillary's packed schedule as First Lady consisted mostly of philanthropic crap, ceremonial visits to foreign countries and REDACTED. Newspapers are still frantically scanning the newly released papers to find out more re our former "co-President" but one thing we do know... [Wash Post]

• One thing is clear: she was in the White House the whole day her husband messed up that intern's dress![ABC]
• A Hillary-supporting preacher estimates the bra size of Obama Girl at 54DD. [YouTube]
• An exclusive report from the front lines in Tibet describes a relatively restrained police reaction to the looting, which didn't go over so well with the ethnic Chinese minority. "One Han teenager ran into a monastery for refuge, prostrating himself before a red-robed Tibetan abbot who agreed to give him shelter." [Economist]
• How thoughtful of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to take time out from worrying about his country splitting apart to worry about Bear Stearns. And by "thoughtful" I am pretty sure I think "scary." [China Daily]
• Vote about what kind of liar you think the CEO of Bear Stearns is! [Dealbreaker]
• Michelle Gass a business visionary. First she invented a chocolatey smooth coffee beverage that could be sold at huge markups and used to addict the young and coffee-averse to strongly caffeinated beverages, then she added whipped cream and syrup on top, then she invented a caramel version, and then she invented a diet version. Surely there is no way of creating shareholder valued she could not pull off. [WSJ]
• Scientific sounding study says women should marry men who are fifteen years older than them. I would try to refute it, but so bad at science! [New Scientist]
• Obama is going to be on The View; yay! [ABC News]

OK, just two more things really. LOL on the nips:

And LOL on the acne:

MOE: Dude, what is Joe Scarbrough wearing turn on MSNBC
Ooooooh Chris Matthews just said "Slavery was in the constitution! We gotta deal with those things!"
He's been aggressively repeating his triumphant confrontation with that Obama supporter.
MEGAN: I'm HOPING that's the ugly sweater his mother gave him for Christmas.
MOE: Oooooh and more hilarity from MSNBC. An employee on Hardball MISTAKENLY FLASHED A GRAPHIC OF OSAMA BIN LADEN as host Chris Matthews was discussing OBAMA
MEGAN: I saw that!
MOE: Hey guys, here's the video of Chris Matthews interviewing that Texas state senator. Oh, so now you like Chris, SinisterRouge? Ha ha ha well will you please answer the same question re Hillary? Honestly if I wanted someone who had already created palpable legislative change I might not be desperate enough to vote for an unproven Senator on the basis of his books and his biography! If I wanted someone who had accomplished shit, crap, I'd vote for McCain!!
But wait a second. I didn't just go there. Besides it's a moot point. Hillary is over, right? Or no?
MEGAN: I personally love how NAFTA isn't her fault because she "wasn't in the Senate" at the time, so she couldn't have anything to do with it... but she wants/takes credit for all these supposed legislative accomplishments as First Lady so she can talk about how experienced she is as a person in governments.
But, yeah, Stephanie Tubbs Jones is a great ssurrogate, and a really good debater and whomever let that poor little man from Texas go up against her was smoking some crazy weed, dude.
Or else Obama's Congressional surrogates from Texas weren't dumb enough to do it.
Um, it's not quite completely finished, but Hillary can't afford to take the rest of the races 51-49. She's got to win them all by the same margins as Obama did last night in Wisconsin (or more, since she's likely to have a few more losses) and start reeling in a lot more superdelegates to win.
And/or con Barack's pledged delegates into voting for her at the convention despite the damage to their own political careers.
MOE: Personally I would rather hear criticism like Samuelson's , who writes today in The Obama Delusion that basically Obama's policies amount to "goody bag politics." Because the reason a lot of Obama believers are into him is because at some level they share Republicans' distrust of government spending, which is why they don't feel like starting any new wars. But if the country is going to move into a sound place economically and socially I think some really drastic moves and some really unconventional thinking are going to need to be applied, and we think all that needs to be underpinned with the kind of political capital Jimmy Carter fell short on — hence Barry. But demonizing free trade and promising new federal programs is ...you know, ugh...I suppose that the real miracle would be if Obama was actually successful at affecting huge change that way. The stupid thing is that it's totally not his specialty, but when McCain talks about getting FedEx and UPS into the government so we don't have disasters like Katrina, or when he talks about "jobs that AREN'T coming back," he makes more sense. Fuck, like I pointed out, Huckabee's crazy Fair Tax is actually supported by a lot of nuts on the left, including someone claiming to be an economic adviser to Mike Gravel. Soooooo...
I guess the only thing we can all agree on is that the whole wealth management industry has too much money.
Which is why most people in that industry give money to Obama.
MOE: I want to pry into John Kenneth Galbraith's coffin and clone that guy for the Obama cabinet is the thing.
MEGAN: I don't like a lot of Obama's or Hillary's economic rhetoric because I don't think it's realistic. We're not going to reverse NAFTA and shit. The key to being successful in growing the US economy (as they recognize at one level by promoting "green economy" jobs) isn't slapping tariffs (i.e., more taxes that Americans pay in higher prices) on everything we import from everywhere all over the world, it's finding ways to encourage development in sectors in which we can be competitive without trying to pick those sectors and enshrining them in legislation that will outlast their competitiveness. Like, let's try not giving tax breaks and whatever to dying industries, let's help employees with retraining and even relocation or, God forbid, continuing education. Let's help businesses with the R&D of their choice or think about the weird ways or tax code fucks shit up for them (like a section of it that says that the depreciation schedule for a warehouse roof is long than the life of the average roof, so businesses end up paying taxes ON MULTIPLE ROOVES).
There are plenty of things to think about when it comes to free trade, but voluntarily raising prices for all Americans in the midst of a recession isn't a good plan, people.
Duh.

s
MOE: That's an important part, but where can America be competitive? I am actually quite convinced that our cultural veneration of the free market and our eminently free, and large, market has left us competitive above all in the business of "demand creation." Our vast expanse and embrace of free trade has also left us with some logistics powerhouses in Wal-Mart, Fed Ex and UPS. That same expanse and huge market and language supremacy and the something peculiarly cultural about our higher education has left us competitive in technology, and for that you have to give MIT and Harvard and Stanford a lot of credit. Our laws and liquidity and educational institutions — again, a function of the massive size of our market — make us competitive in financial services. But let's not forget the fact that in most countries that have produced dramatic economic growth the government has played a role in the decisions that steer the economy. It wasn't an accident that Asia built all those semiconductor fabs. Those are multibillion dollar factories that are incredibly expensive to run, and yet the margins are crappy and the industry is highly cyclical and you don't want to invest in a chipmaking company — or, let's face it, ANY manufacturing business — if you're a shareholder, because the business is scary, and cyclical. You have ups and downs that are inherent to the purchasing cycle. Asian governments opened those factories because they knew the industries were growing and they wanted to create jobs. And we let them go because, you know, the shareholders never saw the point of manufacturing chipsets in America anyway...
Good god

Bonus points to anyone who actually read that.
I don't even know what I am talking about.
MEGAN: All of that is true, but I think the way that we end up trying to choose — partly because we have a different system of government — means we pick too late.
MOE: But it's amazing, you know, we have these incredibly innovative, advanced and effiicient high-tech industries that really led the way in exporting all their jobs overseas. And what manufacturing jobs are we left with?
Auto accessories. American Apparel. Boeing! And we all know Boeing isn't FUNDED BY THE GOVERNMENT.
Should we get back in to discussing the election?
MEGAN: The companies that have the money already are able to successfully argue for protection or encouragement to what can be the detriment of other companies. Take the steel industry, for example. Up in arms over competition from Asia at the start of Bush's presidency, they took to the ITC to argue for retaliatory tariffs and Bush gave it to them... causing massive price and supply disruptions that harmed EVERY SINGLE OTHER downstream industry in the midst of a recession — auto manufacturing, heavy equipment manufacturing, construction, etc, etc. Oh, and since the overseas suppliers weren't about to wait around for us to get our shit together, they sold it all elsewhere, meaning some of those disruptions are now permanent and there's even an undersupply in the world right now.
Ok, I believe we have officially nerded out. Perhaps we should poll readers about whether they'd rather us do this hungover and barely coherent or all up in arms about the nuances of industrial and economic policy.
MOE: Well steel, oil...hahah you just made me think of the Great Leap Forward.
And then you get these "dumping" lawsuits.
It's so complicated! My head hurty
MEGAN: And our lovely economically non-viable "zeroing" policy — the maintenance of which, btw, lobbyists lobby for — that unfairly prejudices the outcome by eliminating from review all the instances in which dumping didn't occur.
MOE: Ooooh, Obama raised $36 million last month.
I have to ask, if he goes to public financing.
Where does that money go? Does McCain just get $12 million and they call it even or what?
MEGAN: I cannot believe that either one of them is going to take public financing. Period. Public financing is this stupid game the candidates play chicken over and then they both agree to dispense with the charade at a mutually agreeable time.
The rule is that they're severely limited in how much they can spend and raise after that, and they're both poised to blow past that. The 2008 numbers aren't yet available, but the cost-of-living adjustment for last year was $81.78 million, so it'll be something north of that. But, basically, outside of accounting and legal expenses, that would be the sole amount of money the candidates could take/spend in the general election. No way.
I think public financing at this point basically serves as a way to get government money to fund the nominating conventions. They got $15 million in 2004.

• UPDATE: The Northern Illinois University shooter killed five people, including himself. [WSJ]
  
• "I will be haunted to the end of my days by what my child has done." That's the mother of Latina Williams, who killed herself and two classmates Louisiana Technical College last week.
  
• And in other senseless death news: 82 middle school-aged kids have died playing a "choking game" whereby, uh...[CBS]
  
• Aaaaaaaah! CALLING THE FEMINAZI BONERKILLER SQUAD: A woman referee was walked off a Kansas high school basketball game and barred from officiating. Because she was a woman. Fun irony: The school is named St. Mary's. [Kansas City Star]
  
• New Mexico finally finished counting its caucus votes: Hillary Clinton won by 1,700. [Wonkette]
  
• But her campaign is fucked: Mark Penn is to blame! [Time]

• Or maybe it's Patti Solis Doyle. Her chief advantages were "loyalty and discipline" (and "little else"); and the fact that Hillary supporters expected a few phone calls from Bill to quell all influential black peoples' interest in Obama; or that Solis Doyle fibbed brazenly about the sorry state of campaign coffers; or that Obama's team knew better how to raise money from non-gazillionaires; or something about Doritos... [Atlantic]
• Britney Spears has a 30-year-old brother, and he's been named a trustee to her trust. [TMZ]
• "More Than A Feeling" writer Tom Scholz says Mike Huckabee's persistent covering of the songs at political events has caused him "damage." [Rolling Stone]
• Mitt Romney is endorsing McCain! Yeah who cares. Mitt Romney's Catholic spiritual adviser is telling our whole fucked up guilty flock of sinful sinners to vote Obama. [Slate]
• Tonight is going to be fucking depressing if I end up watching Lipstick Jungle.

MEGAN: Be thankful you don't still live here- it's still sleeting this morning.
MOE: it's sooooooo gross outside
MEGAN: It is here too! I was planning on leaving the house today initially, but I don't think I care to anymore.
MOE: So .... did you vote yesterday?
or no, right? bc you're unaffiliated?
I wonder who my GRANDMA voted for... Obama won our elderly. She can't really see how cute the Obama family is on account of macular degeneration, but if she could she'd think they were very Kennedy-esque.
MEGAN: Well, I know my grandpa didn't vote for Obama in NY, and my dad couldn't. I can't see my mom going for Clinton, but I'll bet my gramma did.
And, no, I didn't vote yesterday.
MOE: My brother and mom both went for Obama, I haven't heard from my dad yet but knowing him he wrote in "Alan Keyes"... and if my sister actually got her ass to the polls in contrast to 2004 she definitely voted for Obama. So yeah, he won my family by huge margins. But here is what kind of fucks with my head a little: exactly why is it that Hillary did so poorly in Virginia, and that was, you know, "expected." I see the Clintons being slightly unpopular inside the Beltway by people who want an end to dynastic rule or whatever, but I'm pretty sure she managed to win DC whites, because she won 24% of the vote there and the population is only like 20% white, right? So that sort of insider ennui is a figment of my imagination/wishful thinking I guess. So I ask again, why did she lose so bad? Why was turnout so fucking huge? This is the state in which I grew up. It is a red state. What's going on?
Oh my god I just went to Drudge go quick and look at the picture in the right column...
MEGAN: Wait, the puppy? Or do you mean the Clinton/Thatcher mash-up? And who the hell has such a hard-on for Margaret Thatcher that he remembers her outfits?
Oh, wait, Drudge. Right.
MOE: THE PUPPY
IT IS WINKING
IT IS WINKING AT THE AUDIENCE
MEGAN: That motherfucking dog is so damn cute. They've been running video of his win on CNN all morning.
MOE: I just turned on CNN.
I've been overdosing on it lately.
So it seems like the Clinton spin is that Obama's huge margins came from a Potomac region swept away by the momentum because, you know, they've actually been paying attention.
MEGAN: Anyway, on Obama, CNN exit polls, 22 percent of people voting in Virginia's Dem primary identified at independent and they went 2/3s for Obama. But, they're not trusting their own polling numbers on Republicans, which say that 3 percent of Democratic primary voters identified as Republicans and they all went for Obama.
MOE: Well that was my little brother's theory — and it explains why Huckabee did pretty well.
MEGAN: I thought it was kind of crappy last night, actually, that she couldn't find 2 seconds in her 30 minute speech in El Paso to congratulate Obama, especially when Obama got to Wisconsin and made his crowd cheer for McCain's hero-ness.
I think Huckabee did really well in the places in Virginia the rest of us are scared to go.
And, unofficial results would seem to prove my completely bigoted view correct.
MOE: Ooooh, and speaking of bigoted views, Ed Rendell just took credit for garnering Pennsylvania's racist vote in his gubernatorial campaign. I just bolded that for some variety.
Did you just watch that skateboarding video on CNN?
It was disturbing.
MEGAN: I did, they have been replaying that shit every 15 minutes all morning. I felt like I was back home listening to it.
But, where I grew up, nothing would've happened to the cop.
MOE: He was such a dick.
I mean, on a level that was totally preposterous and that they totally loved. But at least now we know why Ron Paul is so beloved by the high school boy contingent.
MEGAN: I smell bacon!
MOE: Until they knock up their girlfriends that is.
MEGAN: That does tend to change the conservative male psyche, and not in the "I'm always going to use condoms forever and ever amen" kind of way.
MOE: Here's something funny: Huckabee won 17% of DC's Republicans. I would really like to know who those 17% were...
MEGAN: I don't think those people would be safe if other people knew who they were. On the other hand, I heard total turnout for the Republican primary in DC was 4,000, so that's only like 700 people. Is there a megachurch in DC? Do that many McLean Bible Church attendees live in the District?
MOE: SEVEN HUNDRED WHOLE HUCKABEE VOTERS?
One of the VA commenters blamed the Latins actually. She was at her polling place and overheard some women talking about how they were voting for "el christiano."
MEGAN: Shout out to JD Regent! I saw that! It made me wonder... who do they think the other candidates worship? Other than power and their own egos, of course.
MOE: SRSLY. That said I discovered the other day that Huckabee's Fair Tax is actually advocated by an economic adviser to Mike Gravel and some Naderites are trying to get the left to embrace it. I would say DC probably has more aggressively counterintuitive Naderite IRS abolisher types than it does typical Bible gut Jesus freak types.
MEGAN: Oh, Jesus, I have commented on the Flat/Fair Tax people before but let me do so again: they've all got The Crazy. Also, their Fair Tax plans make it easier to cheat on your taxes and aren't progressive, but whatever, I'm sure that's not totally why they want to do it.
But, you've right, there are at least 700 of them in DC.
MOE: Whoa Robert Gates slipped on ice. I just did that. And foreclosures are up! I'm sorta glad I turned on CNN but it's making me kinda ADD
MEGAN: Look at how the blue set shines off of Ali Velschi's chrome dome.
It's very Max Headroom'y
MOE: Wow Detroit's foreclosure rate is as bad as Stockton, California's. Detroit actually convinced people to buy its real estate? Man, I'm sorry Motown. You get it all kinds of rough..
OH yeah should we mention Roger Clemens? I have nothing to say about Roger Clemens bc didn't know who he is.
MEGAN: Well, it's good to know that I can turn the TV off at 10:00 when wall-to-wall coverage of his hearing starts.
He's a hopped-up-on-roids baseball player who, unlike the rest of 'em, got caught.
MOE: Hey, speaking of performance enhancing drugs I haven't taken mine this morning and I'm really dying but what I really meant to talk to you about was.
Who McCain will ask to be his running mate
MEGAN: I love, btw, how Pawlenty is all "NOT ME! NOT ME!"
Toomey's full of shit and just naming his friends.
And, um, his major donors, BTW
MOE: You know, they talk about presidential names but it's kinda sad if your name isn't even VICE presidential sounding. Bobby Jindal? Tim Tawplenty? Anyway, for people like me who didn't know who any of these people are, Mark Sanford and Tim Pawlenty and Bobby Jindal are governors (duh) of South Carolina, Minnesota and Louisiana respectively.
MEGAN: I've been hearing Kay Bailey's name and Liddy Dole, but they're generally recognized as, um, not great brain trusts. I don't see them getting along wiht McCain that well.
(Senators from Texas and South Carolina).
Bobby Jindal would be a good choice- he got the good old boys in Louisiana to vote for him, but he'd be stupid to take it.
I'm still curious why no one has said Rick Perry.
(Governor of Texas).
MOE: Can you rank these people from most/least offensive?
MEGAN: Define "offensive"
They're all likely to be more conservative than McCain
MOE: Really?
MEGAN: I guess maybe Charlie Crist would be the least offensive, but he's dogged by those pesky gay rumors and won't get it.
Here's a right wing run-down of who they want to see.

MOE: So I have to say I was sad I missed the day MITT ROMNEY STEPPED DOWN LIKE THE LO$ER HE IS. Someone somewhere wrote he'd "abandoned the product lunch." And now it's not even on Drudge. Or maybe it is but I don't look down that far.
MEGAN: I mean, basically, he didn't want to run so long he couldn't run again because he looked stupid
so, he's basically planning on being back.
MOE: Lucky us? What did you think of the speech? The pundits seemed to think it was "feisty"... and I was kinda doped up, but I found it demeaning, hateful and borderline racist!
MEGAN: I love how part of it was about executing OBL? The hell?
MOE: Oh yeah by that point I was like, "Really Mitt? You wanna talk about welfare queens and the cycle of dependence? Tell me again the story of how you were born a poor black child who pulled himself up by his Timberland bootstraps etc. etc."
MEGAN: I'm sorry, I'm slightly distracted
Chaka Khan is on CNN RIGHT NOW
And, personally, thoughts of Romney cannot compete
MOE: O h my, what is she doing? I can't leave my bed.
MEGAN: She wrote a book! She's in The Color Purple on Broadway! She quit drinking! They played clips from half of her videos.
Oprah got her to be in The Color Purple
Um, so, ok, fan girl moment over. Back to Mitt Romney. Yeah, he basically hit all the conservative talking points so he can be remembered as a real conservative in 4 years when McCain loses and he runs for the nomination again.

WARNING: BRIEF BUT EARNEST RELIGIOUS DISCUSSION FOLLOWS. PROBS BEST TO IGNORE.
MOE: "Through the Fire" used to make me cry as a kid. Chaka Khan is probably the best thing ever, now that I think about it. And yeah I love how the only feature-y angle on Mitt Romney anyone can think of now is Was It Good For the Mormons? Look, there's an A1 Journal story about that as well. I dunno, I think it may have been better for Lawrence O'Donnell.
MEGAN: I dunno, in some way I love the fact that everyone thinks Mormons bring the crazy harder than any other religion. Like, Christians believe that a virgin popped out a kid fathered by God who went out to rise from the dead but it's totes weird that a church in America would want to practice the polygamy condoned by the Bible and believe that Jesus appeared to the Incans or whatever?
MOE: It's tough to say. On one hand, Huckabee's religiosity scares me mor than Romeny's religion did. On the other hand, when you're faced with a faith that has been systemically racist until 30 years ago or whatever, whose very Bible says dark skin denotes unbelief and loathsomeness, whose story has more in common with Dianetics than the Dead Sea Scrolls.. it's tough to take. I don't buy the "all religions are fucked up" argument. Like Lawrence says, in some religions, rejection of most tenets are not only tolerated, they are the norm. LDS absolutely does not work that way, and that spookly excommunication of members who publicly dissent from the teachings — which is such a terrible fate few of them seem willing to go there — represents the epitome of the kind of dogma I don't want having any sort of hold on the brain of any leader of anything.
Someone who won't publicly denounce Brigham Young's preachings on miscegenation because it's politically problematic is sure as hell never going to make a tough decision in his political life.
MEGAN: Well, but Catholics excommunicate disagree-ers (see: denouncement of pro-choice politicians like Mario Cuomo and John Kerry). And they don't accept Catholics throwing out bits of dogma. So maybe that's why I sort of shrug my shoulders at Mormonism.
Because I was raised Catholic.
But I agree with your points on the racism.
MOE: Yeah but we were raised Catholic and can still identify as Catholic and still go back to our Catholic schools and Catholic churches and Catholic communities and have spirited arguments over any one of these things — or not, because at this point I know NO ONE in my old Catholic community who doesn't agree with me on pretty much everything w/r/t to the church. So we run for president and some pedophile-enabling archbishop says we shouldn't be receiving the, ahem, "Body of Christ." Is my family crushed by this? Does anyone in my community even care? What about anyone who isn't going to die within the next ten years? That's the thing. Catholics talk all the time openly about the problems with their dogma. It's not some super sensitive thing, like it is with the Mormons, where you can't make fun of their faith, and they can't make fun of it, or it's not open to discussion, because OMG religious FREEDOM. I dunno, I think there's a huge difference, and it's not necessarily about which is weirder, the Book of Mormon or the Book of Revelation — I would still argue, given the time during which it was written, that the latter (ooh, see what I did there?) is weirder, but that's neither here nor there because the real issue is what is socially acceptable.
And hailing from and representing a community that where dissent and disobedience are not yet the norm.
Anyway this is getting way too serious though and I know I am going to get some LDS hate mail.
MEGAN: That's ok. Plus, if you just say "fuck" a lot in the intro they probably won't read this far into it.

MOE: Hahaha good point! So what else is happening...Americans have abruptly slowed down their wild credit card debt incurring! There's something to be thankful for, right?
MEGAN: Unless they're all just waiting for their rebates to start up again.
MOE: Oh fuck, here's something to be FRIGHTFUL for: McCain Huckabee. Do we have any good authorities on just how plausible this is?
MEGAN: Huckles would be a smart choice for McCain - Southern, a governor, good speaker, they don't hate each other. I don't think he's probably go there, but I don't think who he does pick would be terrible far afield from there. Unless he picks the rumored-to-be-gay Charlie Crist

MOE: Crist is good. Sounds like Christ. Wouldn't it be awesome if he adopted a young Cuban refugee named Jesus? That guy would sooooo be the frontrunner in 2032.
MEGAN: Jesus for President!
MOE: Oh, my god, I just image searched Crist. Hello, beauty queen girlfriend? Wow gay gay gay.
MEGAN: Right.
MOE: Sorry I just turned into Perez for a moment
I wonder if he has weighed in on the subject.
MEGAN: Hahaha. Perez. Weighed.
MOE: So like, Charlie Crist is tanorexic in Miami so he is out... Huckabee's family is too trashy...who does this leave us with? Joe Lieberman?
MEGAN: Haley Barbour? Rick Perry? Pundits are calling for Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, but I don't see putting a Midwesterner on the ballot, but what do I know?
MOE: What do ANY OF US KNOW
MEGAN: And, somehow, we come back to the purpose of religion.