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." •

• Rielle Hunter's friends don't recall the videographer's affair with John Edwards ending in December 2006. One says, "I'm not sure what men tell their wives about their mistresses represents the most accurate portrayal." [Huffington Post]

• Newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter forgot that he isn't a Republican any more and told a reporter that he was backing Norm Coleman's bid to prevent a filibuster-proof majority all the way to the Supreme Court. [NY Times]
• Then he took it back. [Talking Points Memo]
• Then the Democrats stripped him of all his seniority because, for whatever reason, they don't trust him, his motivations or his willingness to vote their way! [Washington Post]
• Someone else the Administration doesn't trust: Mayor of Kabul Afghan President Hamid Karzai. With that pro-rape law and drug-dealing relatives, that's no big surprise. [Washington Post]
• The United Kingdom doesn't trust right-wing nutbag Michael Savage not to incite ethnic, religious and other violence so it won't let him visit; he's now suing British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to prove he's not a psycho. [Reuters]
• In other psycho news, Michele Bachmann charged Barack Obama with enslaving the nation's youth. [ThinkProgress]
• Mitt Romney, who recently cracked a sexist joke about how Time's list of influential people was really only a beauty contest, was actually one of People's "Most Beautiful People" once upon a time. [Huffington Post]
• Some Mormon had Barack Obama's mother posthumously baptized against the will of her family in the middle of the campaign. [AmericaBlog]
• The Mormons are investigating, which means they're hoping the issue will die down aso they can go back to funding efforts to keep same sex couples from getting married. [Politico]
• Some Bush lawyers might get disbarred for twisting the law in an attempt to make torture legal, but they probably won't get prosecuted. [NY Times]
• The Obama Administration won't announce its replacement for Justice Souter this week. [Huffington Post]
• Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has agreed to be the GOP's token, rather than its real leader, and will give up the sole actual power the RNC Chair actually has (meaning: the purse strings). [Washington Times]
• Uh-oh: Joe Biden just found out why it's a crappy idea to appoint a caretaker Senator so that your son can run for your seat in two years: Beau Biden, despite his tour in Iraq, is trailing Republican Congressman Mike Castle in the polls by 21 points. [Politico]

• Rudy Giuliani, still angling for higher office, skipped the wedding of a gay couple (with whom he lived mid-divorce). His secretary broke the bad news to them just two days prior. [NY Post]

• The resignation of Supreme Court Justice David Souter has spawned resignation among some Republicans that President Obama will (spoiler alert!) appoint a nominee that doesn't think Roe v. Wade should be overturned. [UPI]
• Not that it will stop the anti-abortion activists who are holding up the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to the Department of Justice and hampered the confirmation processes of Solicitor General Elana Kagan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. But since they apparently only go after pro-choice women, as long as Obama appoints a man, he should be fine. [LA Times]
• Obama, unsurprisingly, already has a list of potential nominees. [Washington Post]
• GOP leaders have decided the best way to redeem the Party of No is by listening to Democrats...just not the ones in Congress or the White House. [Politico]
• Mitt Romney, pissed that he didn't make Time's list of the world's most influential people, said that Sarah Palin (a popular failed Vice Presidential candidate and current governor who people pay to hear speak) only made it because she's pretty. [Politico]
• Back in the state that she governs, Palin is backing a ballot initiative to require teens receive parental consent to have an abortion. [Anchorage Daily News]
• Arlen Specter isn't going to be a loyal Democrat, but he'd like to be the candidate of loyal Democrats in 2010. [Politico]
• Someone finally removed their head from their ass over at the Department of Justice and is investigating whether it was legal for John Edwards to pay his mistress to make videos of him. [Associated Press]
• The White House can't decide whether it wants to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell or not. [ThinkProgress]
• Former Republican Vice Presidential candidate Jack Kemp died and Obama said nice things. [Politico]
• Yet another grade schooler is doing a better job than half the press corps, and used his face time with Condoleezza Rice to grill her about torture. [Washington Post]

According to Maia Szalavitz, writing for Time:

But according to 10 students, two separate parents, and a current part-time employee interviewed by TIME - some of whom are involved in the state inquiry - Mount Bachelor Academy regularly uses intensely humiliating tactics as treatment. For instance, in required seminars that the school calls Lifesteps, students say staff members of the residential program have instructed girls, some of whom say they have been victims of rape or sexual abuse in the past, to dress in provocative clothing - fishnet stockings, high heels and miniskirts - and perform lap dances for male students, as therapy.

The school, naturally, denies the charges.

Mount Bachelor's executive director, Bitz, says her school uses widely accepted psychological treatments to help children overcome their problems. "We also use a psychodrama treatment approach designed to do one or both of two things," said Bitz in her statement, "get a student to embrace qualities of their character (such as beauty or courage) about which they have doubt, or assist them in recognizing qualities that are unproductive (such as selfishness or conceit) about which they have little insight."

One student described the "psychodrama" treatment.

One 18-year-old former student and victim of rape wept while recounting what happened to her during a Lifestep seminar. Jane, who asked not to be identified with her real name, left the school in March. "They had me dress up as a French maid," she said, describing an outfit that included fishnet stockings and a short skirt. "I had to sit on guys' laps and give them lap dances," while sexually suggestive songs, such as "Milkshake" by Kelis, played at high volume.

"They told me I was dirty and I had to put mud on myself for being raped," she said, in reference to a separate Lifestep session. "They basically blamed me for getting raped."

Unfortunately, slut-shaming for the enjoyment of the male students is hardly a new therapeutic technique at Mount Bachelor.

[Melissa] Maisa attended Mount Bachelor between 1992 and 1994 under largely the same management that runs the school today, and graduated the school with honors. She was sent there in part because of promiscuous behavior as a teen, which Maisa associates with being a victim of child sexual abuse and date rape. "Mount Bachelor made me feel even more dirty and more shameful than either one of those experiences ever did. I just want to make sure the things I suffered through there never happen again," Maisa says.

She describes a Lifestep in which she says she was required to perform an exercise called "the holidays." "I had to stand up in the sluttiest way possible and strut over to every male in the room," including the counselors, Maisa says. She was instructed to sit on the floor before each man, place her left foot on his right knee and say, "This foot is Christmas." She then placed her right foot on his left knee and said, "This foot is New Year's. Do you want to meet me between the holidays?"

Maisa says she performed the holidays more than 250 times. When she failed to show sufficient enthusiasm, Maisa says she and her peers were punished, each having to repeat their own humiliating skit.

The bad treatment plans aren't limited to rape and abuse survivors either. One girl, who turned to drugs and alcohol after the death of her sister, describes what counselors put her through.

According to Ozier and others, in a Lifestep called "Forever Young," students were placed on a mattress and taunted with painful information about their childhood that they had previously revealed, an apparent attempt to trigger regression to infancy. Once more, Ozier was instructed to recall her sister's death against her will. "That was probably the thing that traumatized me the most," she says, describing how she thrashed on the mattress until she vomited. "They prey on people who have already been hurt."

Sounds more like aversion therapy than regression — and certainly it's probably made her rather averse to therapy.

So where the fuck does this kind of "therapy" come from?

Synanon began as a drug rehabilitation program before morphing into a controversial cult and is credited with putting forth the idea that confrontation and boot-camp-style breakdown tactics could cure teen misbehavior and addiction. Synanon's confrontational techniques influenced est and LifeSpring, which began selling weekend seminars designed to prompt emotional breakthroughs in participants.

Food, sleep and access to the outside world - sometimes even to the bathroom - were strictly controlled. Using intense role-playing, humiliation and physical experience, the seminars attempted to liberate people from victimhood by teaching them that they are ultimately responsible for everything that happens to them, including being a victim of child abuse or rape.

Mount Bachelor's Lifesteps appear to share these tactics and philosophy. Several of its top employees formerly worked at a now defunct chain of troubled-teen programs known as CEDU, which was founded by former Synanon members.

I think that's known as "a cult."

As an aside, Szalavitz posts in a related piece on the Huffington Post that Mount Bachelor's parent company — through Aspen Education, owned by U.S. Aspen, owned by CRC Health — is actually Bain Capital. Does that name sound familiar to you? It might, since it's the company founded by former (and possibly future) Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. And while he's been retired from the company since 1998 (before it took over CRC Health), he still receives income from Bain, which it is getting by charging parents to dress their daughters up in slutty costumes to make them accept responsibility for their rapes.

The state of Oregon is reportedly investigating the abuses — but this isn't even the first time they've done so.

In 1998, Mount Bachelor was investigated by the Oregon DHS based on claims by several former employees that students were "subjected to frequent obscenity-laced screaming sessions by staff members; students were deprived of sleep; a group of girls emerged from one group therapy session with bruising on their arms after they were ordered to clasp their hands in front of them and pound a mattress for an extended period," according to the Bend Bulletin. The Oregon DHS cleared the program following the investigation.

Of course they did. Because, after all, it's a bunch of fucked up kids — and mostly girls — making the allegations.

An Oregon School For Troubled Teens Is Under Scrutiny [Time]

Related: Do Lap Dances and Humiliation Treat ADHD— and Should Public Schools Pay? [Huffington Post]
Millionaires-in-Chief [CNN]

[Picture via Buy Costumes]

• The California Supreme Court this afternoon granted a hearing to the Prop 8 opponents' challenge to the ballot measure that eliminated same sex marriage rights in the state. It did not, however, issue a stay that would have allowed same sex marriages to continue. [Equality California, California Supreme Court (pdf)]
• Missouri finally finished counting its votes and has narrowly gone for McCain. Obama still gets to be President, though. [Politico]
• A judge has ruled that Al Franken's campaign is entitled to written reasons why certain absentee ballots were rejected, which is expected to help his efforts to oust Norm Coleman. I'd bet the voters whose votes were rejected would like to know that sort of thing, too. [Politico]
• But the Dow fell again, so we're all pretty well screwed for now no matter what. [Huffington Post]

• Not as screwed as the automakers, who aren't going to get their piece of the bailout pie, a quest that was not helped by Mitt Romney— the primary candidate who won Michigan by kissing their asses earlier this year — saying that they should be allowed to go bankrupt. [NY Times, NY Times]
• And the auto industry's favorite Democrat, Michigan Congressman John Dingell — who has been chairing the Commerce Committee to their benefit for 2 years — lost a preliminary vote to keep his Committee chairmanship to upstart Congressman Henry Waxman. So it's really been a shitty week for them so far. [Politico]
• But they are definitely not as screwed as Republican crackpot John Ziegler, who decided to give an interview about his crappy new poll that says all Obama voters are poorly informed to Jezebel Crush Object Nate Silver and ended up, in the face of Silver's superior brain, telling him, "Go fuck yourself." Don't mess with our man, John Ziegler. [FiveThirtyEight]
• In a fit of crazy, Michelle Bachmann blithely declared that she never said that thing about investigating Congress members for being un-American that everyone heard her say. [Politico]
• Even crazier is Joe the Motherfucking Plumber, who has an enormous crush on Sarah Palin. Hustler, are you listening? [Huffington Post]
• Nearly two weeks after it was first reported, Obama's people have confirmed that strategist David Axelrod will join his Administration as a senior adviser along with Greg Craig as White House counsel. [Reuters]
• Dick Cheney has been indicted — along with former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — on state charges in Texas that his financial interests in Vanguard Group (which runs some prisons there) are tantamount to participating in that company's abuse of power. Don't get your hopes up: prosecutor Juan Guerra "has a history of launching eccentric court and political battles," as though that needed to be said. [The Telegraph]
• Republican Senator Arlen Specter announced today that he plans to fuck with presumed Obama AG nominee Eric Holder about his role in the Marc Rich pardon at the end of the Clinton Administration, as though any of his constituents care. Apparently, Specter is fully prepared to hop on the train to Crazy Partisan Town with the rest of the Republican Party and ignore his many years as a moderate that have helped him get reelected. [Politico]

MEGAN: It's good to have the old gang back together! We should make it a point to talk about ass fucking.

JIM: Please. Please no ass fucking. What a disgusting act. But yes, hello, Megan and friends here at the Jezebel.

MEGAN: I'm sorry that the bad man did that to you that time. But that doesn't mean no one likes it.

JIM: HAHAHA WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?? Tell me a political story.

MEGAN: Sort of like I'm sorry that that Michelle had to submit to The Chin last night. Or the fact that "no one really knows how often electronic voting machines fail. The Election Assistance Commission—an independent governmental agency charged with establishing election standards—doesn't collect comprehensive statistics on failure rates".

JIM: Hmm, is J. Crew a "good" political brand for Michelle Obama to sport, or does it make her seem fancy? Here's my answer: no one cares.

MEGAN: That's because a dude tells us it's sexist to care. Which I guess makes all women sexist. Because I was like, what happened to White House Black Market?

JIM: All this talk about voter irregularities. I'm led to believe that if I vote for Obama (btw, I'm not voting because I live in DC which will go 143% for Obama; sue me) a robot will jump out of a broken computer screen and chop off my head with acorns. There's way too much of this conspiratorial malarkey going around. Everyone knows that people will vote and whatever happens, George Bush will somehow win again.

MEGAN: And we will all thank our robot overlords, bowing and scraping to their king, Dick Cheneybot 9000.

JIM: This is never an auspicious start: "Republican [figure] called the media 'sexist' Monday..."

MEGAN: But that is how everything starts now! Republicans care about us laydeez and how sexism affects our daily lives, like when we read media stories about Sarah Palin's clothes. Just not, you know, when we want insurance to cover our birth control or our bosses to pay us the same as our male colleagues doing the same work. That's just silly. Also, did you know that the head of the RNC was some guy named Mike Duncan? Didn't it used to be, like, famous Republicans and shit? No wonder their brand sucks.

JIM: Yes, Ed Gillespie was the most famous person alive when he ran that little chop shop. I have no idea what this "Duncan" looks like. Maybe he is unattractive.

MEGAN: Not to be sexist again but yes.

JIM: Oh he's kind of cute. Hey so let's talk about abortion, specifically, how all Liberal ladies like to have them, all the time, for fun. This is why Liberals hate Sarah Palin, according to the National Review, in one of my favorite articles ever. Some loser argues that since Palin didn't abort her "Trigger," Liberals all RESENT HER FOR BEING MORAL. All I do now is read the National Review all day long.

MEGAN: They are bringing the crazy like no one else this election year, it's true.

JIM:

Seeing the Palin family, in a very visible public forum, with an uncompromising and public pro life philosophy arouses deeply repressed feelings in post abortive parents, as well as media members, counselors, health care professionals, politicians and others who promote abortion rights, especially the abortion of children with challenges such as Down Syndrome. These powerful repressed feelings of grief, guilt and shame can be deflected from the source of the wound (i.e., abortion) and projected onto an often uncharitable focus upon the trigger of these painful emotions…the Palin family.

Is this true, gals?

MEGAN: I mean, obviously I'm just a quivering mass of grief, guilt and shame from the abortion I never had nor needed to have because my school saw fit to teach me about birth control, I have seen fit to use it even when insurance didn't cover it but did cover my colleagues' Viagra and because I've been damn lucky. Yes, deep quivering mass of shame, that's why everything I write is about how Sarah Palin is an annoying slag. I mean, if we're going to talk about misdirected anger, methinks some sort of National Review writer knows a little too much about what it feels like for a girl.

JIM: I hope National Review goes under next, since we now have a magazine or newspaper imploding two or three times a day. Ha ha, "jobs," there are none.

MEGAN: Well, Christopher Buckley "left" to save all those angry Republicans from canceling their subscriptions after his apostasy. So I guess that means it will survive or something. Sadly.

JIM: Yeah, and now obviously he is the greatest person in Political History according to the liberal media. It's reminiscent also of how he "left" his bastard child son by disowning him and how WFB Jr. "left" the same bastard child no money in his will by claiming that the kid was DEAD TO HIM.

MEGAN: Wow, it's obviously the kid's fault that his dad likes doinking publicists. Also, Anna just sent this to me as "breaking" news, but apparently a "top McCain adviser" — you know, one of the ones that convinced McCain to choose her — thinks that Palin is a "whack job". Good to know that they're not completely out of touch with reality.

JIM: Ha ha, surely this person would say the exact same thing if McCain was winning the election. This is just more Mormon space espionage from the Romney loyalists.

MEGAN: Well, if anyone knows about whack jobs from personal experience, it would be Mormons. And Romney loyalists.

JIM: Hmm, well let's guess who this could be. My guess is: John McCain.

MEGAN: OMG, that would be the best thing ever. Like, fuck my advisers shutting me off from the press, I'm going to sneak into the Straight Talk Potty and engage in some straight talk.

JIM: My guess is: Michael Goldfarb.

MEGAN: Anyone that likes Abba as much as Michael Goldfarb has no place calling Sarah Palin a whack job. Besides, he couldn't go back to his old job "writing" because love for Palin is the new litmus test. I'm betting it's a lobbyist. We're all wicked backstabbers.

JIM: Well she wouldn't be such a whack job if they would LET HER FREE. Let's talk about the electoral map or something, speaking of whacking off.

MEGAN: The electoral map? Man, I would've had more coffee if we were going to get down with The Math this early. And by "more" I mean "some."

JIM: Ha ha I have had none! Anyway. Ahem: KERRY STATES +IA+NM+CO OR +FL OR +VA+NV+... Oh I can't do this either. But there are new shocking states at least make-believe "coming into play" every day. Arizona (angry Mexican spill over from NM/CA/CO)

MEGAN: Dude, I suddenly live in a swing state.

JIM: And the funny thing about that bad boy is that John McCain pretends to live there!

MEGAN: When he really actually lives here! There's a reason that his campaign office is located in Arlington and not, say, Sedona, and that's because it makes it easy for him to walk to work, not that he does because his entourage drives the 3 blocks in their armored SUVs that get 8 mpg.

JIM: Ha ha you live in the Racist Confederacy, this is true. You should come up to DC for Election Night though, to participate in the Race Riots!

MEGAN: I'll head over to Rosslyn and live blog it burning from a safe distance. Luckily, everyone in D.C. is too gephyrophobic to come across the river.

JIM: What is that fancy $50 Georgetown master's degree word you're throwing at me?

MEGAN: Phobic of bridges.

JIM: Oh. I could've guess that from context! I did poorly on the SAT.

MEGAN: Bullshit, Mr. Ivy Grad.

JIM: Tut tut now!

MEGAN: Where's your monocle?

JIM: Sssshhh I WILL PURCHASE YOU. And SELL YOU to THE ACORNS.

MEGAN: Noes! not the ACORNS! Did they give you a cane with which to hit other staffers with at graduation?

JIM: YES, that was the best story ever! How do you wake up this early, every morning. I would vote for that Republican, Wolf, because why not, that little twerp deserved a caning.

MEGAN: Dude, I wake up at 7:30, curse the world, and try not to die of sleep deprivation.

JIM: You grown-ups are weird.

MEGAN: Is it just me, or is your mind blown that David Letterman managed to beat journalists and political strategists to the whole McCain pals around with a dude that liked to bomb crap, too thing?

SPENCER: Remember, it's not the ASSOCIATION, it's the LYING.

MEGAN: Oh, you mean like how McCain did initially when asked about it?

SPENCER: And when McCain pauses for a moment, apparently unable to remember whether he attended any fundraisers thrown by G Gordon Liddy.

MEGAN: Actually, we can just go to the tape, where it's 3 minutes in. After that, he cops to more than just "knowing" the guy.

SPENCER: Well, let's give credit to the ChicTrib's Steve Chapman, who did write "McCain Has His Own Ayers" on Oct. 7

Liddy has contributed thousands of dollars to his campaigns, held a fundraiser for McCain at his home and hosted the senator on his radio show, where McCain said, "I'm proud of you." Exactly which part of Liddy's record is McCain proud of?

MEGAN: Maybe this part?

After the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, he endorsed the shooting of federal agents: "Kill the sons of bitches."

SPENCER: But this is the interesting part. You've seen exactly one liberal, Tom Frank, defend Ayers, in the WSJ, and that was on the grounds of pure friendship. Meanwhile, Liddy emerged unrepentant from Watergate, which Chapman reminds us was "-part of a broader plot to steal the 1972 election through sabotage, illegal spying and other dirty tricks," to become a widely beloved right-wing talk radio host. To answer Chapman's rhetorical question, that's the part McCain is "proud of," or at least has to display fealty toward.

MEGAN: Also, by the way, let's not forget how Liddy plotted a fucking POLITICAL ASSASSINATION. Or the bombing he wanted to do at the Brookings Institute. The guy is a fucking psycho, that's probably why he and McCain are all BFF.

SPENCER: But they're not, really. It's a transactional relationship — McCain needs to kiss a ring to stay in the good graces of Fever Swamp America. That's why the whole thing is so tawdry and contempt-inducing.

MEGAN: But, back to stealing elections and voter intimidation. So, ACORN. Former Republican US attorney David Iglesias admits they were the target in 2004 and 2006 and they didn't do anything illegal but he was asked to gun for them.

SPENCER: Yes ABOUT that attempted election theft.

MEGAN: Oh, well, it's not really theft if they can keep voters from the polls in the first place!

SPENCER: Here's something that consumed my former TPM colleague Paul Kiel, the hardest working muckraker in the business, while we were there. Everyone remember that Alberto Gonzales fired nine US attorneys, most of them Republicans, because, among other things, they wouldn't accede to pressure to prosecute Democrats or bring bogus election-fraud cases ahead of the vote, a longstanding tradition of countries that aren't, say, Venezuela.

MEGAN: I mean, if you can't bring political prosecutions to solidify your grip on power, what's the point of packing the Justice Department with underqualified political hacks? Duh.

SPENCER: And Gonzo, thanks to the intrepid work of Paul and Justin Rood and Josh Marshall (with some help from Pat Leahy and John Conyers), resigned in disgrace last year. But before he left, Gonzo changed the rules in the DOJ voter manual precisely so his legacy would live on. F'rinstance:

The new version (pdf), which replaced the 1995 manual, lowers the bar in terms of voter fraud prosecutions — no longer cautioning against pursuing isolated, individual cases of fraud and softening language that had all but prohibited pursuing such cases before an election.

This is what's behind this apparent federal investigation of ACORN. Now, ACORN says that despite a leak from the FBI (!) it's not under investigation.

MEGAN: It's so tawdry, even the FBI feels used by Republicans. Their assholes haven't hurt this bad since J. Edgar died. Plus, yeah, what happened to conducting an investigation in secret and not leaking stupid shit? Did they learn nothing from having to pay out the ass to Stephen Hatfill?

SPENCER: But whoever leaked this shit — Lara Jakes Jordan of the AP (she got the Santorum "man on dog" interview, fun fact) says it's two "senior law enforcement officials" —- is obviously trying to spread the smear that there is a widespread voter-fraud effort underway on the left. FBI best practices are not the point. This is what Nixon's operatives — like Liddy! — called a "ratfuck": you politicize and smear and introduce toxins into the news bloodstream, all in the interest of creating a Big Lie

MEGAN: Or an alternate truth. A truthiness.

SPENCER: The vote-fraud manual changes are designed to build corruption into the system. And I wonder I wonder I wonder how the right will appreciate a vigorous Feingold Justice Department effort at disenfranchising conservative voters in September or October of 2012.

MEGAN: I do have to say, I actually think Republican efforts to keep people from voting are a little ironic, because I really think everyone should vote, but I'm actually concerned what would happen in they did. I like that Republicans think the country would move left, and I'm scared it would head far, far to the right. Does that mean Republicans are actually less misanthropic than me? Or just that I've spent more time talking to Real Americans(TM) than them?

SPENCER: It strikes me that that's a bit besides the point of the effort. Winning elections through designed-in fraud is only one part of it. The larger part — if I can use a Nixonland term — is to persecute, confuse and weaken the left and its constituent parts. Everything else is academic. They recognize that you could probably build a center-right coalition that could win honest elections — with some hiccups or interregnum periods of Democratic revival — but you can't build a far-right governing coalition of any durability. The last time that was attempted... why, we're living through it, and it ends in multiple quagmire-y wars and global financial catastrophe and a 90-percent wrong-track poll rating. So you get shit like this:

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday, after the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 9-6 on Tuesday that Ms. Brunner must notify election boards of all voter records containing information that doesn't match driver's license or Social Security databases.

Ms. Brunner's appeal said many mismatches will appear for trivial reasons, such as typographical errors. She said Wednesday that as many as 200,000 of Ohio's 660,000 new registrants this year could be affected. The order — stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Ohio Republican Party — gave her until Friday to either provide lists of mismatches to election officials or give them an easy way to search a state database. In her court filing, she said early efforts to reprogram state computers have turned up glitches in the matching process.

I don't want to be hysterical about this, but liberal circles are starting to wonder whether Ohio could be stolen for real this time, with 2004 as a warm-up act.

MEGAN: And what's worse is most of those 200,000 disenfranchised people might never vote again. Fuck "might," they won't.

SPENCER: Explain that please

MEGAN: I mean, most people in this country don't vote. And if your first voting experience is to show up at the polls only to be told to fuck off, why would you? It takes at least two and usually 3 elections to solidify the voter participation habit among people that aren't fucked out of voting by a corrupt system.

SPENCER: ... and this indeed would be three.

MEGAN: So, in theory, the Republicans aren't just stealing this election, they're insuring Democratic voters don't show up for years to come.

SPENCER: And here's where I'm tied in knots: on the one hand, you have the good-government, pro-democracy position that retaliation by a liberal administration would be an unalloyed evil, a net loss for the country. But on the other. If the Republican Party is going to act like a criminal cartel, then persecution — and I'm not going to whitewash this through euphemism; let's be clear about this — makes sense. What's to stop them from doing this if they don't pay a price? And I don't mean just an electoral price, because in January 2009 they'll just start preparing for the next round of fraud. What do you think?

MEGAN: I mean, do you have to persecute when/if you can prosecute? In addition, they continue to justify these voter-fraud "initiatives" (a.k.a., voter disenfranchisement efforts) by raising the specter of fucking 1960 and the then-Mayor Daley and dead people voting. that's almost 50 years ago, but that's what they'll argue every single fucking time In fact, I had that argument with a Republican friend of mine this weekend, that they're just doing it to "make sure" things are fair because Democrats "have a history" of this. That's my concern with persecution, that it'll just become this century-long tit-for-tat game that makes the electoral process even more fucked up than it has to be and discourages even more people from participating. That said, yes, I would love to see some asses kicked and some heads fucking roll.

SPENCER: OH SHIT CNN is saying that ACORN's Boston offices were broken into. Does G Gordon Liddy have an alibi?

MEGAN: Fuck Gordon Libby, check the Romneys. And Kevin Madden, who I think I should really be forced to strip search. Those are, like, the only Republicans in the area.

MEGAN: Oh, hello there! How were your protests yesterday? We talked about spanking without you.

JASON: The protest was modestly-sized, but passionate. If you caught the story on Cavuto last night, I spoke to the same woman from the Mahoning Valley that he did, who was very nice in that she allowed me to ask her many silly questions, like if she was jealous of the attention John McCain gave the Georgians, and whether Cindy McCain, if she bought their tent city, would count each tent as a separate residence or if collectively, the tent city would be a single domicile.

MEGAN: Yeah, I don't normally watch Cavuto because I've normally got my head deep in my computer writing the news round-up for the end of the night, but she sounds nice!

JASON: She was very nice. So, okay, speaking of forays into the lives of working class women, we have Maureen Dowd this morning.

MEGAN: Oh, God, any segue that starts off that way normally makes me want to tear out my hair. What did she spew now?

JASON: Anna sent me a link to her column. And mind you, I usually consider someone forwarding me her columns as a type of assault. But this being Anna, I knew that it was important, dangerous work that needed to be done. So I'm reading it, and honestly? Through three paragraphs — which in Dowd-ese means "three hastily constructed sentence fragments" — she does okay. But then you get this:

"The Wall Street Journal reported that McCain was thinking about taking Palin to the U.N. General Assembly next week so she can shake hands with some heads of state. You can’t contract foreign policy experience like a rhinovirus. To paraphrase the sniffly Adelaide in “Guys and Dolls,” a poy-son could develop a cold war."

Fugue For Tinears! I mean, that's the op-ed version of being clouted with a ball peen hammer.

MEGAN: Honestly, if I wasn't wearing my glasses, I would have smacked myself upon reading that. Who says that? Who thinks that?!!

JASON: Maureen Dowd is JUST THE WORST. Murder your darlings, darling! The rhinovirus line was sufficient!

MEGAN: Well, speaking of the over-privileged...

JASON: Anyway, that fucking travesty was about Carly Fiorina. I sense that your taking it in that direction? Since we're on the subject of travesties?

MEGAN: No, actually, I wanted to talk about Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who Moe and I mocked last week for her horrendous editorial about elitism, and is now endorsing John McCain. Like, bitch went to the Democratic convention on the motherfucking platform committee, but she's endorsing John McCain this week. Because, as an elitist, she know elitism when she sees is and DESPITE WRITING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLATFORM she's going to vote for John McCain because Obama wasn't nice enough to her.

JASON: What a relief! I had thought that we might end up with Dischord Records releasing a ROTHCHILDS AGAINST ELITISM compilation disc or something! Let's talk elitism. Here's the lede from Portfolio's profile on Lynn:

"When 67-year-old British banking scion Sir Evelyn Rothschild first set eyes on 44-year-old Lynn Forester at the 1998 Bilderberg conference—the matchmaker was none other than Henry Kissinger—she was already a woman of major means."

I mean, wow. Kissinger and the Bilderberg conference come up RIGHT OFF THE BAT. So, you know going in that this is the woman who will cure us of our elitism.

MEGAN: I guess she really, really, really knows elitism. That's about the most amusingly gagable description of a meet-cute since I didn't read the New York Times wedding announcements last weekend. Also, the woman helped write the Democratic party's fucking platform, but because she's got a personal distaste for the candidate elected to represent and implement that platform, she's going to publicly support, campaign for and vote for the guy who represents and plans to implement the polar opposite.

JASON: What I see as the problem is that this person was allowed within a million miles of the Democratic party platform. They should be glad she turned into a self-lancing boil.

MEGAN: I mean, what I want to know is: what sections did she work on? I mean, obviously not the ones on energy, the environment, reproductive freedom, marriage equity, equal pay, women in the military, taxes, health care... so, what's left? Is there a section on wealthy baronesses?

MEGAN: Um, WHOA, our embassy in Yemen just got bombed. MSNBC says 16 people are dead so far. But no Americans so far.

JASON: Ten Yemeni civilians, though.

MEGAN: Well, since when did suicide bombers care about their own people? They have a political point to make about... something.

JASON: True. Reports say that snipers opened fire on the first responders, too. Another terrorist act brought to you by the people we will not go and fight.

MEGAN: That is, notably, the second attack we've faced in Yemen, in case anyone's forgotten.

JASON: There was a mortar attack on the Embassy earlier this year, as well.

MEGAN: Well, let's play newscasters and make our sad/serious faces now and quickly changes the subject back to something "sexy". Like Carly Fiorina.

JASON: Yes. We'll get a thorough dose of grandstanding from Senators McCain and Obama later.

MEGAN: And then we can talk about it again! So, let's talk about Carly Fiorina and her ego. Is it just me spending too many hours with Republicans, or do you recall a lot of times hearing that we needed someone to run this country more like a business? Like, say, Mitt Romney.

JASON: One of the hallmark arguments the GOP has made, IN MY LIFETIME, was that the U.S. of A. COULD BE RUN LIKE A BUSINESS!!!

MEGAN: Just not, apparently, with McCain or Palin at the helm.

JASON: Really? Should Carly Fucking Fiorina be lecturing ANYONE on how to run a business?

MEGAN: Hey, I am happy to let her spout off again McCain and Palin. Let's not stop her, please? She knows a lot, from personal experiences, about the kind of people that shouldn't be CEOs.

JASON: Yesterday, Andrea Mitchell was basically taunting her about her own golden parachute, even as John McCain is vowing to end the practice. (And don't ask me how the federal government achieves THAT.) And she said that with her it was different!

MEGAN: Well, of course hers was different.

JASON: ...that her severance package was decided for her, put to a vote. And that constituted real reform! Two things on this.

One: Yes, Carly. I am sure that there was a vocal faction of Hewlett Packard decision makers who were like: "You know what? We need to consider not giving her all these millions of dollars. Because we need to send a clear message to shareholders that we hired an incompetent woman to run this company. THAT WILL WORK."

Two: The process Fiorina describes is commonplace! That's how these golden parachutes get strapped to these morons' backs. These disgraced CEOs aren't, you know, actually PLUNDERING THEIR COMPANIES COFFERS WITH A SCIMITAR CLENCHED IN THEIR TEETH.

MEGAN: Also, it's all super-clubby up in there.

JASON: Not that John McCain could stop that, either! He had an ad up, exclaiming ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! And then three hours later, the government bails out AIG.

MEGAN: Last night, I seriously turned off the computer and TV, took a short nap and went to dinner and by the time I got there, the entire bar was watching the news of the AIG bailout — and I don't even live in NY! And it's not like golden parachutes aren't "voted" on, but they're "voted" on in the same way that North Koreans "vote" for Kim Jong Il.

JASON: Right! Minus the exciting visual of those adorable goosestepping lady soldiers! AND THEY ARE ADORABLE! I want to SQUEEZE those crazy ladies! Who says intractable fascism can't have a Cute Overload aspect to it?

MEGAN: I never did understand why dictatorships continue to allow goosestepping to remain alive.

JASON: Could you imagine having, like, a three-inch tall brigade of North Korean lady soldiers skipping all around your apartment. I would be like, OMGZ THAT IS TEH CUTENESS.

MEGAN: I think they should be at least 10 inches.

JASON: Jeezy creezy! Is the Dow already down 209 points today??

MEGAN: I love, by the way, that the NYSE was opened today by "Emeritus Senior Living." Where John McCain would retire, if he didn't have the right to die, senile and crapping his pants, in office. Sidenote: Bob Casey is on MSNBC right now and, um, man needs to wax that unibrow.

JASON: You know, credit John McCain. He has, to my knowledge, never crapped his pants. Yesterday, Carly crapped hers twice on national teevee.

MEGAN: See, I prefer to think of that sort of appearance as vomiting up the bile from her soul.

JASON: You won't be seeing her on teevee for a while, either.

MEGAN: Well, my days will no doubt be burdened by that.

JASON: More time for Empress Nancy Pfotenhauer. And Tucker Bounds! And now the Lady de Rothschild!

• Noted anti-fur activist has some advice for noted huntress Sarah Palin: "She can suck it." Yet another woman with a legitimate policy disagreement with Sarah Palin. [Huffington Post]
• By the way, Todd Palin's about to break his subpoena cherry, as he's expected to be subpoenaed to testify about his role in TrooperGate. God, if only the Congress could subpoena people to testify about wrongdoing in the Bush Administration! Wait, that's right, they could, but then they wouldn't get their bellies scratched. [Wall Street Journal]
• Once upon a time, in a primary far, far away, John McCain said that former Governor Mitt Romney and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani (pop: 8,000,000, attacked by terrorists in 2001) didn't have enough national security experience to be President. [Huffington Post]

• Unsurprisingly, Sarah Palin's next interview will be with Sean Hannity next week. Apparently, Charlie Gibson wasn't fawning enough. [New York Observer]
• Not that it matters whether he was or not, probably, since McCain's now ahead in the polls for the first time. Apparently, more people think that he is inexperienced than believe that Sarah Palin is. No, for real. [Associated Press]
• Oh, and of course Sarah Palin signed off on the budgets that cut funding for rape kits in Wasilla. [Huffington Post]

MOE: Hey we can sort of start now if you want, though I'm still mostly reading through stuff. I just bought some beer because I think I'm the soberest person in Philadelphia right now. (The Eagles won a REALLY CLOSE game with the Rams today.) But here's something fun:

Mr. Rove said Mr. Schmidt’s increased authority — which came about after what amounted to a coup by Mr. Schmidt and other McCain aides with ties to the 2004 campaign, that gave him equal status with the campaign manager, Rick Davis — has been the best thing to have happened to Mr. McCain.

Oh God, Karl Rove. How do you do it, Karl Rove? You secure the election of a president so incompetent and widely loathed he decimates your party, then you leave the business for the media. Once in the media you commence bashing the media. You bash the media for asking questions about — not reporting, just asking around about — a rumor.

MEGAN: I am well on my way to non-Eagles-related drunkenness and I still cannot believe Steve Schmidt. Or Karl Rove. Like, seriously, did we watch the same speech? Only I thought it totally bombed and I talked to a shit load of Republicans at the wake today and people thought it fucking killed.

MOE: The sordid details of which are clearly, creepily reminiscent of the (much more easily refutable) rumor you disseminated to nastily defeat your boss's rival in the 2000 Republican primaries. And eight years later, said rival's distance from your old boss being the single-most compelling trait for Republicans to safely rally around, your old cronies take over his campaign, choosing a running mate whose most salient characteristic besides her nice bod is that she was the only member of the shortlist with a dearth of accomplishments deeper than that of your old boss in 2000, and then exploit the scurrilousness of said (much less obviously mendacious) rumor about said running mate's "personal" life to smear the "media"… (And who is paying for this? The media. "I'm not in the media, I'm around the media" is I believe how Rove put it…)

MEGAN: I wonder, honestly, if Rove even takes himself seriously at this point. I mean, the Palin Blake Slate is one of the reasons she was chosen.

MOE: Nah, he can't possibly. I actually find him more amusing than offensive at this point. Although maybe that's just because I read Safire today.

MEGAN: I did not read Safire today. I honestly feel like reading columnists is like a job that I don't get paid enough to do.

MOE: Don't let it hurt your teeth too much.

MEGAN: Honestly, at the point at which he says that Broder was the only fair pundit in attendance that night, it's hard to gag while I'm laughing so fucking hard.

MOE: And in shades of Friday's "Wow, I can't believe I'm going to calm myself down by talking about Bill O'Reilly," I entreat you to calm yourself down, after taking a gander over there, with the soothing relative sanity being preached by Chuck Krauthammer.

MEGAN: Oh, wait, he said something true:

The McCain acceptance speech reads better than it was read.

Oh, wait, here he's back to teabagging McCain:

That called for McCain to set aside his longtime reluctance to recount publicly his wartime suffering.

Ummmm, you know, except for his FUCKING MEMOIRS.

MOE: Oh shit, I am starting to find Palin so relatable though! Back in Wasilla they used to call her base of support the Liquor Cabinet.

MEGAN: Man, I would totally vote for the Liquor Cabinet.

MOE: Oh dear, and here her ex-brother in law admits he used a Taser on his 10-year-old son.

MEGAN: Ugh, that is super lame. Also, did you notice that after her announcement, she took her bouffant-y twist out? One of my reporter friends was like, she wears it like that to seem taller, she's gonna have to take it out for the campaign, McCain isn't tall enough.

MOE: Oh God Janice Min Janice Minnnn I'm boycotting you now:

“She out Obama’ed Obama with her speech,” said Janice Min, the editor of Us Weekly, who said the criticism of its coverage would pass soon enough. “She came on like a supermom who is not going to take a lot of guff from anyone. The way media works now, it is impossible to separate the personal from the political, and I think her role as a celebrity — how she does on that level — could have a significant effect on the election.”

Yeah I noticed it; I believe they decreed it to be Hepburn-esque in the New York Post. Here, exhibit five.

MEGAN: I didn't tell you! David Carr interviewed me for that piece at the Vanity Fair-Google party... and didn't use my quote. But it might be because I was drinking enough that Ana Marie Cox was like... um, what are you drinking? Because I was sort of lapping her on her alcohol acquisition. That's not the best sign, probably. Ok, I've found my first reason to be actively and yet completely unreasonably against Sarah Palin, other than the whole anti-choice thing: the use of multiple exclamation points:

"New administration finally allows new input, fresh ideas and ENERGY to work with the public to shape this city!!!"

MOE: Ok and I've found my first reason to reconsider my general assertion that the media hasn't been overstepping:

And yet, you get the feeling that at the end of the day, she could shake out that lustrous mane (longer than any other major female U.S. political figure's) and get it on with her man. She wears skirts that are quite form-fitting and often goes without stockings. As ZZ Top might say, she's got legs, and she knows how to use 'em. When Sen. John McCain introduced her at an Aug. 29 campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio, she was wearing open-toed red patent leather shoes.

That is the resident fashion critic at the LA Times.

MEGAN: Um, fucking gross. Also, I have peep toed pumps, that obviously means I'm a fucking whore.

MOE: Well you're obviously a fucking whore. But so am I and I have three pairs of shoes, everyone knows that.

But, oh my God and she is totally the Britney Spears of MILFs.

Palin held her baby in her arms as the warden drove a short distance around the facility, said corrections director Joe Schmidt, who sat next to Palin. A few days later, the governor got a warning from her public safety commissioner that someone had complained that she did not strap Trig into a car seat for the ride.

Palin dismissed the complaint as petty, and the commissioner, whom she appointed, took no formal action. But the incident shows the degree to which family and politics are bound together in Palin's career.

MEGAN: Yes, I mean, shoes do not equal whore, like, wtf is the LA Times fashion critic talking about?

MOE: Um, is that really what "the incident shows" Washington Post?? Or does the incident show that SARAH PALIN IS A TERRIBLE MOTHER WHO NOT FOR NO REASON AT ALL LEAKED AMNIOTIC FLUID ALL OVER THAT PLANE (or whatever.)

MEGAN: Ok, well, that doesn't say back seat or front seat, plus it doesn't mention whether she was breast feeding or not. I dunno, I got kicked out of a bar for being there with a pregnant friend who was like I JUST WANTED ONE GLASS OF WINE. Also, my vagina leaks a lot, particularly when I'm ovulating. I'm like sloppy, annoyingly wet.

MOE: Ugh that is so annoying. Didn't they read the story about how you can actually binge drink during pregnancy so long as you only do it a few times a month or so?

MEGAN: I don't know, they were complete assholic assholes about it.

MOE: OOOOOOH maybe you are just female ejaculating all the time like those women in those other stories who have orgasms all the time and have to strap miniature vibrators to their underwear just to get through the day????

MEGAN: Nah, when I was a teenager, I went to my doctor and she said it was normal. Like, it's my body being like IMPREGNATE ME!! But, fuck that bitch, I have an IUD.
Anyway, so if she got 600 votes in her first election and 900 in her second, then despite what Mitt Romney said, she didn't get as many votes in two elections as Joe Biden got in Iowa.

MOE: Hahaha oh Mitt Romney, please watch him now in this clip I made of that speech — well actually I had Nick McGlynn make it, thank you Nick — but I sat through the speech for the purpose of conveying in 42 seconds how insane it was. And I was pretty sure that crap about Biden getting fewer votes was, in Noonan parlance, "bullshit" but thanks for that.

MEGAN: I heard that and I was like... yeah, there's no way that's true. I used up 90 percent of my internet connection Wednesday night proving it.

MOE: Yeah, the thing that sucks about these Republicans is that they don't care if you fact-check them. I really wish Plouffe or whoever could just get up and say something equally outrageous and blasphemous like…hold on…like how about, "Sarah Palin ran a town that is smaller than many high schools!" Oh wait, that's true, hm, or like, what about "Sarah Palin's fiscally conservative policies managed to sink that tiny little town into enough debt to buy a brand-new Prius for every household in it TOO BAD HER HUSBAND IS THE TOOL OF ALL THOSE STUPID OIL COMPANIES." Ughhhhhh but that would also be true I think!

MEGAN: Oh, shit, another convention story I meant to mention: I met David Gregory in a Starbucks. He's replacing Matthews and Olbermann as anchors. Only, back at Wonkette (now erased in this server migration), I posted this video of him dancing to Mary J. and my friend Eric Brewer tracked him to a video of Obama dancing on Ellen and he had a poll about who was better and Gregory won. So, I was like, hey, so, like, I did this video of you and Obama dancing and he was like, oh, I totally saw that. And then I blushed and got totally awkies.

MOE: Well in lieu of lending credence to the scurrilous rumor I heard about Palin's heroic son in the Army I am going to ask you if you read today's Filkins piece in the Times Magazine about how Pakistan has turned into the Minneapolis of the Terrorist Convention and part of that is flaky Benazir Bhutto's fault for thinking it was a good idea to arm the mujahadeen back when we also thought that was a good idea, oh and did we mention history and that repeating itself thing, as comforting as it is to know that people make the same stupid mistakes and repeat all the same fuckups even in places where the average citizen doesn't consume a metric tonne of alcohol every month, it is not very comforting at all actually. Here it is. Obama was good on this issue the other night with O'Reilly, incidentally, not that O'Reilly had any idea.

MEGAN: I keep meaning to watch the O'Reilly shit, but my parents don't have cable. Anyways, anyone who elects Zadari deserves what they get, sort of like how I feel the overwhelming majority of people who either voted in GWB for a second term or — more likely — didn't fucking bother to vote better not now be bitching about their adjustable rate mortgage, I tell you what. Even people in Pakistan know he's a Thaksin-level corrupt asshat — and they probably have some idea who the fuck Thaksin is, too. Also, I object to the assertion that I consume a metric tonne of alcohol a month. That's why I mostly drink wine and hard liquor, to keep the tonnage down.

MOE: Oh god yeah Thailand, we could discuss that too, and Freddie and Fannie, THE NIGHT COULD LAST FOREVER. But what's hot right now? I thought the Times magazine story by Frum on Republicans and income inequality was interesting, if namely for its incongruity following a week during which the proverbial Bullshit, as Janice Min so eloquently pointed out, triumphed so decisively over Shit That Actually Matters.

MEGAN: Wait, income inequality? Get yourself some fucking bootstraps, yo. Does anyone even fucking know what bootstraps are?

MOE: Whoa, the origins of all the Palin kid names! Turns out that taken together they all come together to mean "CANNY ATTEMPTS TO DEFLECT OBVIOUS CORPORATE BEHOLDENNESS BY INGRATIATING SELVES TO NATURE FETISHIZING IDIOCRACY" or just "FLAGRANT POLITICKING RIGHT FROM THE START." Fuck I somehow didn't realize Sarah Palin married Todd because she was knocked up. That is so rouge cou.

MEGAN: I mean, it's like a month, tops that they knew. Chances are, like other super-Catholic friends of mine, they boned a little early and found out a couple weeks after the wedding regardless.

MOE: Nah nah Track was born eight months after they eloped "to save money." I dunno, it's funny. God, who gets pregnant the first time they have sex? Well, I have a friend whose parents did, but how crazy. Oh man it's getting late though I guess. And there's still so much! Damn the weekend for being over.

MEGAN: Well, luckily, I opened a magnum of wine! I got plenty of time!

MOE: Ok i'm getting another beer. Dogfish 90 minute IPA, not that they're sponsoring me. Not that i would LET THEM.

MEGAN: I've got a Yellowtail Cabernet. I am not going to pretend if a winery wanted to sponsor my blogging I would deny them the opportunity, but I would rather it be something non-corporate like Guglielmo or Hecker Pass, two of my favorite family wineries.

MOE: Ugh are we too far-gone — and too far down on the moral authority pay grade — to weigh in on Biden's belief that life begins at conception? Because personally I am inclined to say "well sure it does, so what" but you all know how paranoid I am about seeming "flip."

MEGAN: I mean, Biden's a Catholic, that's the party line, right? I just don't buy that. I don't believe it in the slightest. I'm not sure I believe in a soul. Potential life? Ok, maybe, but all evidence is that plenty of potential lives are ejected regularly from women's bodies. I just... I just don't buy that a zygote is A Life.

MOE: Right, well the "soul" is a different matter. As I think we might have discussed before, there's a genuine debate within the believers in souls as to how a soul could be formed at conception, then split into two separate souls two weeks later. Anyway "Life" …bacteria is life. Now human life is more important than animal life, but ughhhh if embryo life or fetus life was as precious as regular fully formed human life you would think there would be a huge public health campaign to finally put an end to the mysterious plague that silently kills as many as one in four humans before they even have the chance to get heartbeats! But there is not. And now I am tired.

MEGAN: My sister's fiancé was just asking when I was going to bed. I could stop drinking and try that out.

MOE: Yeah this is the longest Crappy Hour ever already I think. I've been drinking really slow and am still tired and I think that is a sign.

MEGAN: Ok, so, I'll check you at an abortion-esque ungodly hour on Tuesday.

MOE: Oh, but that David Gregory story was awesome.

MEGAN: There's nothing like embarrassing oneself in a Starbucks full of Republicans to make embarrassing oneself on the Internet seem totes minor.

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?

9:57 ET: She's out to the strains of country music, and so am I... at least until our Rudy thread. Bring your ferrets!

9:56 ET: Washington is broken and even though McCain's been in office in Washington for more than 20 years, he's not, like, at all part of the problem and choosing Palin shows it somehow.

9:54 ET: Alaska has the same electoral votes as Delaware. That's a slam on Biden? Also, by the way, Delaware is really small. Why is she shitting on Delaware?

9:52 ET: Palin's a great choice, people are standing, etc. I wonder if there are still people handing out free Coke Zero's outside of security.

9:51 ET: Apparently, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have any executive experience. Of course, neither does Senator John McCain, but shhhhhhh.

9:49 ET: Wasilla has 10,000 people, and Sarah Palin governed it. Of course, it didn't have that many people in 2003 when she left office, but whatevs.

9:48 ET: Governors deal with issues Congress members only talk about, like environmental policy and other things the federal government is in charge of.

9:44 ET: FACT CHECK TIME: Sarah Palin received 909 votes in her 1999 mayoral reelection race. Joe Biden got 2,328 votes in Iowa for his Presidential campaign in Iowa. It only took me this long to find because my internet connection is hella slow. Lingle's still going on about Palin's kids and ethics reforms. Not a great speaker, Linda Lingle. Second woman of the night to incorporate pink despite the red background.

9:42 ET: The crowd applauds for her beauty pageant days.

9:41 ET: She knows Sarah Palin. She's also ripping off Fiorina if she says it over and over again.

9:40 ET: Linda Lingle! It's ladies night again! She's gonna talk about Palin.

9:38 ET: John McCain sacrificed every single thing for all of us! Also elect him! He's out!

9:37 ET: Stupid long story about education and veterans and whatever blah blah blah lames but everyone applauds because the word "soldiers" inspires a Pavlovian response.

9:34 ET: Did you know John McCain was tortured? And that he didn't bend by renouncing his country or going home early? Definitely a night of new information over here.

9:33 ET: Sarah Palin got more votes for mayor in Wasila than Joe Biden got running for President. Gonna fact check that one.

9:32 ET: Abortion reference. Again. Before I started liveblogging, even the elected commissioner of the Texas railroads had an opinion on my uterus.

9:31 ET: Huckabee pretends he used to shower with Lava soap. If you don't get it, you're an elitist. If you do get it despite being an elitist, you roll your eyes. Also, he didn't sit around when he was poor and wait for the government to rescue him. What was the name of Reagan's fake welfare mom again?

9:29 ET: Barack Obama's "excellent adventure" to Europe. My, God, let's just put up a fence to keep us in, we wouldn't want to be polluted by strange and foreign ideas.

9:28 ET: Electing Obama is risky. Thanks, Mike Huckabee.

9:26 ET: He thanks us liberal elitist media for unifying to Republican party untied behind McCain-Palin. "The reporting of the last few days has been tackier than a costume change at a Madonna concert." Man, why does he gotta bash on my girl?

9:26 ET: Ha, ha, he wanted to be the nominee, but he's happy to be here to talk about John McCain. He's got character and "the stubborn kind of integrity" that we need or something.

9:25 ET: The Huckster is in the house! No sign of Chuck Norris, though.

9:21 ET: Funktastic wedding reception music plays. The only people apparently still dancing are those people trying to get on camera.

9:17 ET: Elitist media unable to identify the song. YouTube says: Rodney Atkins, "If You're Going Through Hell." Rodney doesn't explain what I'm supposed to do, though.

9:16 ET: American is the hope of the earth, and the Romneybot departs. Musical selection: something country. Some people are singing along.

9:15 ET: "Just like you, there's never been a day when I've not been proud to be an American." People cheer "U.S.A.!. U.S.A.!" again and we don't mention Michelle Obama by name.

9:13 ET: Republicans believe that there is good and evil in the world — Evil Empire, Axis of Evil and by the way, radical violent Islam is evil and John McCain will defeat it and everyone stand up and cheers and we're back to "U.S.A.!. U.S.A.!" just as the German reporter arrives again. Sigh. Also, it's cool to call Islam evil because that's "straight talk and not politically correct talk." Ugh.

9:12 ET: Government unions have "Tyranosaurus appetites." What? That was out of no where in the energy portion of his speech. Everyone stands up for grounding Al Gore's private jet. Romney oughta talk.

9:10 ET: "It's time for the party of Big Ideas, not the party of Big Brother." Umm, whose idea was the PATRIOT Act and the FISA bill? I think you meant "Big Government," only Bush expanded the size of our government too. I'm overthinking this, but I finally have an empty bladder so I have more intellectual energy.

9:09 ET: Umm, change comes from opportunity. I feel like there's always the opportunity to not be racist and sexist and plenty people choose not to change.

9:08 ET: Liberals don't have a clue. Also, he's quite shout-y tonight. Someone must've given the Romneybot some caffeine.

9:07 ET: Washington is liberal because of: Gitmo decision, limits on offshore drilling, government spending has doubled since 1980 (notably: 8 years of Dems in the White House in those 28 years)

9:06 ET: Screws up stupid rhyme scheme. Also, something about the sun will rise in the west because John is from Arizona and Sarah is from Alaska and it's a crap metaphor.

9:05 ET: With all the Mormon rumors and shit, he probably shouldn't start his speech with "Ann and I love you all." At least if he doesn't want me to snort.

9:04 ET: The first semi-deafening cheers of the night. Also, quite possibly the best ass of the night. Trying to find the boys in the crowd.

MEGAN: I am so happy to have you back! (When you're back from getting coffee, that is).

MOE: Okay, here I am, having showered and resigned myself to brewing coffee because I can't leave the house twice in the same morning that is blasphemous, and watching Fox News. Wow, has John McCain cast a wide net for running mate! They are talking about Meg Whitman! Alaska Governor Sarah Palin! Mitt Fucking Romney! (God I would love it to be Romney!) But I suppose we should talk about last night's speech, even if I kind of think it's not worth talking about.

MEGAN: Well, the VP speculation was all the rage in the press box last night when no one was speaking. MSNBC was reporting it was Pawlenty, rumors were flying it would be Kay Bailey Hutchison, someone who doesn't have to be non-partisan was begging for it to be Romney, it was pretty amazing. And how is it not worth talking about?! It was amazing. People were crying. Like, hearing the way African-American people talk about this and the symbolism of seeing him be the standard bearer for the party, has been really interesting actually. One woman I interviewed for Glamocracy was like, black folks don't get invited to conventions very often, but we finally feel not just allowed but welcomed.

MOE: Yes, that is beautiful and moving and amazing and shit, but I gotta agree with what Noonan warned me about with that venue which is to say:

My own added thought is that speeches are delicate; they’re words in the air, and when you’ve got a ceiling the words can sort of go up to that ceiling and come back down again. But words said into an open air stadium…can just get lost in echoes, and misheard phrases.

Or cliches and tiresome pandering, which is, I believe, what that venue did for the speech. I love this guy, but if he is going to knock China within his first few minutes, if he has to take it to the illegal immigrants undermining our wages…well Jesus Christ, Barack Obama, this is your chance to point out, And I Say All This Not Because Illegal Guatemalan Meatpackers And Migrant Chinese Factory Workers At Heart Deserve America Any More Than We Do…but because we have to do right by the rights and values and ideals upon which this country was founded and improved before it is too late. And the "before it is too late" is where you get into the Iraq War, as opposed to — and here is what really sat badly with me — pointing out the Iraqi government's unspent surplus.

MEGAN: I'll be frank, by the time he got around to discussing policy issues, I was sort of bemoaning being the only woman (besides my friend Emily) anywhere near my section because if there had been more women, there would've been Diet Coke and I was ready to usurp ownership.

MOE: Which seemed tacky. But then! I switched to Fox News and Frank Luntz was yammering on about how it reminded him of Ross Perot circa 1992. Which I think means it was a success.

MEGAN: But I do recall without the benefit of the text, that he pointed out that he wanted to get out of Iraq, and used the surplus issue to make the point that they don't even really need us that much.

MOE: Those Perot voters are exactly who Barack Obama needs to vote for him! Unless he'd like to run himself.

MEGAN: Oh, God, Frank Luntz is so annoying! I'm glad I missed most of the punditry this week. I don't know that we need Ross Perot when we have Bob Barr.

MOE: Right! They don't really need us that much…WELL OKAY AGAIN YOU ARE RIGHT WHEN YOU SAY BARACK OBAMA THAT WHAT THEY REALLY NEED IS A TIME MACHINE. But yeah, no, they have some urgent needs in Iraq, and to dismiss them so glibly annoyed me. But speaking of Fox News, you know, it's what I watch when I have to watch TV news which is why I don't watch a lot of TV news. Are the other channels running those "I'm John McCain and here's looking at you kid" commercials?

MEGAN: Well, it all had to be done by the end of prime time without going so long that people tuned out. Plus, I actually thought that there was maybe too much policy in the speech, though I realize he was trying to counter inter-Democratic charges (all flash and no substance, etc.) with it. But a policy speech is a different thing. So I didn't get particularly exercised about it, though I'm pretty sure I lost 90% of my capacity for excitement on my second day of the convention.

MOE: See but, the genius of Barack Obama is that he has made substance his style, and that he has proven himself capable, in a speech, of teaching America little lessons, reaching the corners of the minds of average swing state Americans that seems to almost scramble their ideological codes, restoring in them intellectual honesty for a few seconds. I truly felt that when he "threw his grandmother under the bus" in that race speech. That race speech bowled people over and, more importantly, reminded them there's a trajectory here, that we don't give up hope on America precisely because we've encountered these little obstacles before…and this speech did not have this. Most offensively — and I do not get offended — this speech had "save our farms." Save our farms? Are you fucking kidding me?
Oh, but, loved Michelle's dress. What was that?

MEGAN: Well, you knew that was coming. He's from Illinois. I have no idea who made the dress, but Michelle has looked every single kind of awesome this week. So have Malia and Sasha, actually.

MOE: Now on Fox they're saying it's Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate. (Maybe)
Oh man Malia, Malia…she's just so very elegant! It is almost intimidating.

MEGAN: I mean, she's looked both pretty, elegant and age-appropriate, which I personally loved.
As for Palin, I don't know why she'd give up the governorship of the state of Alaska to be a running mate for John McCain. She'd be an inspired choice if he could get her, but I don't know why she'd do it, really.

MOE: Here's the other thing: I found the little documentary about Obama they showed in the lead up to the speeches — this was on PBS — I found it very inspiring because Obama talked about how his mother had impressed upon him the importance of putting himself in others people's shoes. And I think that's not an easy thing for a politician to pull off without making the other side cynical, what with so many of them being such profound narcissists, because all the conventional wisdom says "No, you don't understand, you have to put yourself in the shoes of a cliche." Put yourself in the caricature of his shoes!
Oh that is reminding me how Mitt Romney skipped the Timberland factory or something. That was Mitt Romney, right?

MEGAN: Nope, he went, he just didn't take their shoes.
Actually, I hated all of those videos this week, I found them super-annoying and disruptive to the energetic vibe I thought they were trying to create. I got on board with Michelle's, but then they just kept on coming. Sort of like the free bars but not the free food, which I'm sure has a lot to do with my current utter exhaustion.

MOE: I suppose that is enough until next time! Hey commenters, if anyone understands anything about the water supply, feel free to email me bc I need some help on a post. KTKSBAI
Oh fuck! Hold on. You can't leave without the funny David Brooks line.

MEGAN: Sure, what is it?

MOE:

For this election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional. It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are.

That is why it needed to be a better speech I think. But I'll hold out hope.

• Yeah, he still ain't telling. Probably tomorrow. [Washington Post]
• He did reportedly call all the losers last night. No one's admitting anything, though. [CNN]
• Random Texas Congressman Chet Edwards — who Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been pointing out for months — is apparently shortlisted now, though, and gave a cute press conference with his son in tow. He didn't say anything but that it's not so hot in Texas today. [Huffington Post]

• Time says that Mitt Romney is McCain's main man, so HuffPo recounts their hatred for one another. Oh, nostalgia. [Time, Huffington Post]
• There's a new Obama tribute video by famous people. It has a Cheeze Factor of 10. [HuffPo]
• Russian might be actually pulling out of Georgia this weekend. So, that's good at least. [Associated Press]

MEGAN: Hey, what's up? Is it weird that I'm not hungover but I feel enough out of it that I might as well be?

SPENCER: Can you believe that the District of Columbia revoked my driver's license just because I decided not to pay a ticket that I got in New Jersey a couple months ago?

MEGAN: Quite honestly, kind of. I know other people who have gotten their licenses revoked for that kind of thing. I always winced a little when you mentioned that, but everyone knows I'm a goodie two-shoes except when it comes to D.C. parking tickets. And then I'm a soulless, conscienceless scofflaw.

SPENCER: You, I know, have a system in place for [redacted] when you accumulate tickets. Ingenious

MEGAN: Shhhh. Anyway, so, doesn't it feel to you like this VP picking process has gone on forever? Like they're just playing chicken with one another?

SPENCER: According to Adam "Ad Nags" Nagourney, it all ends as early as tomorrow:

Mr. Obama had not notified his choice — or any of those not selected — of his decision as of late Monday, advisers said. Going into the final days, Mr. Obama was said to be focused mainly on three candidates: Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.

I say no to Bayh, maybe to Biden, and yes to Kaine. Tell me what you think

MEGAN: Well, I'm on record as feeling like Bayh is just a Washington climber who never, ever wants to have to go back to Indiana, and I'm betting he ends up with a cabinet job, but then I saw this rumor that an Obama staffer said it was him to CNN plus screencap of the now-pulled story and I got a little worried. I have no idea why he'd pick Biden, honestly, I want to believe he's just a red herring. I couldn't believe Kaine would saddle the state with a Republican governor by leaving (who would then get to run for a term of his own, bypassing Virginia's term limit law), but then I remembered he's a politician.

SPENCER: I heard about that. If he picks Bayh, the left will go fucking firecrackers. My friend Max even set up a facebook group against Bayh, and these guys already feel seriously dissed by Obama after FISA.

MEGAN: I miss Sebelius speculation.

SPENCER: Let's talk Kaine in a second. Why would he pick Biden? Biden, writes Jon Cohn in TNR — an honest man at a dishonest magazine — has that foreign policy expertise and that pugilism:

If Biden is the choice, I think it would speak well of Obama's judgment. Biden has a deep and impressive resume: Not only is he the guy who orchestrated the defeat of Robert Bork back in the 1980s, but he can also claim among his legislative accomplishments the Violence Against Women's Act, which is no small feat. He's smart, articulate, and is a bona fide expert on foreign policy: In other words, he's certainly capable of assuming the presidency in an emergency, which is really the most important criteria of all.

Joe Biden also has a good critique of TNR, for that matter. Four years ago I went to interview him for a piece about Kerry's counterterrorism strategy for TNR and he was trying to figure out whether I wanted him to say that Kerry would take a more targeted, al-Qaeda-centric approach or would just kill all the Arabs "Your magazine," he said (this is from memory), "has to figure out whether it's liberal or neoconservative, already."

MEGAN: Ha, this douchebag and his syncophants (one of whom emailed me last night to castigate me, by the way) are suing to get the VAWA thrown out as unconstitutional. Also, I love that he said that to you.

SPENCER: Oh shit i have to read that post! PS, don't fucking Twitter while we're doing Crappy Hour. You forget I'm on your feed!

MEGAN: I was waiting for you to type! I don't dislike Joe Biden, I honestly could see him as Secretary of State, but I really don't think this election is going to be won on foreign policy issues with the economy in the crapper.

SPENCER: Biden: I like the pugilism a lot. Don't expect it to be won on foreign policy. Picking Biden would be to tamp down McCain's only (if you believe the polls) advantage, leaving him with nothing while Obama kicks his ass on the economy

MEGAN: And he's a great speaker. But Delaware? And your friend Jon's right about that bankruptcy bill, that was a huge giveaway to the credit card companies... and sponsored by Arlington Congressman/wife-beater Jim Moran. He'd like me to come to his women's issues forum with Donna Brazile. Maybe if I bring a small, African American child he can smack him for the crowd.

SPENCER: That's a dream, man! I'm really equivocal on Biden. He voted for the war, though he calls it a mistake. In reality, he didn't want to vote for the war, he was terrified of getting smeared as unpatriotic like he did after he voted against the first Gulf War and this was a year after 9/11.

MEGAN: I see your point, but I think Kaine's a trade-up. Plus, bonus Catholic points, since Obama isn't going to win a ton of evangelical votes.

SPENCER: Now: Tim Kaine. I know nothing about him and like him!

MEGAN: That's pretty much Tim Kaine's advantage right there.

SPENCER: He's white and dimply and Virginian and I guess kind of liberal and didn't vote for the Iraq war, so that works for me. You, my friend, are the Virginia resident among us, so make the case. How liberal is he?

MEGAN: The eyebrows are killer, though. With all the smack Sebelius took for her response to the State of the Union, I can't believe no one brought up his.

SPENCER: A bunch of activists on a listserv I'm on seem to think he's unacceptably less-than-deep-blue.

MEGAN: He's a serious Catholic, I'm guessing that freaks some liberals out. But he's a serious Catholic seriously personally opposed to capital punishment who nonetheless denies clemency requests to prove that the Pope ain't the boss of him, or something, so I don't love that about him. That part makes me miss Mario Cuomo.

SPENCER: How is he as a governor?

MEGAN: I mean, I think he's been a pretty decent politician, the legislature here is pretty right-wing and he's successfully pushed stuff through and kept crap from going through. He's been pretty good on transportation issues, which are huge up here in NoVa, but were he not on the short list, I would guess that he'd be remembered as a serviceable but not spectacular governor unless he does something crazy at the end of his term.

SPENCER: Yeah, northern VA is all wine-swilling assholes like you. Jesus CHRIST if I make my Windy deadline this morning it'll be a miracle...

MEGAN: Actually, if Obama takes Virginia and Colorado, he can lose Florida or Ohio. And, I'm sorry, McCain's best feint on getting a Virginian on the ticket was Eric Cantor, so...

SPENCER: HAHAHAHAHA if McCain has to get a Virginian it will speak desperation. Not like the bravery of choosing Joe Lieberman!

[McCain's] top contenders are said to include Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Less traditional choices mentioned include former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, an abortion-rights supporter, and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential prick in 2000 who now is an independent.

MEGAN: I'm actually amazed that there's not a single Southerner on McCain's short list.

SPENCER: Joe, Joe, Joe! Make the GOP ticket the most jowly of all time! If McCain goes with Lieberman, I reverse my choice and hope Obama picks Biden, just because Biden will tear the living shit out of Lieberman in any debate.

MEGAN: Oh, fuck yeah, that would be popcorn and beer time watching that! At what point in the race do you think Lieberman would start undermining McCain the way he did Al Gore?

SPENCER: Not even SLIGHTLY and here's why. Lieberman is animated by the classic neoconservative grievance of rejection by his first love, the Democratic Party. Jacob Heilbrunn's book goes into this pathology in detail. And honestly, I have to admit I understand it, given my inability to let go of this whole TNR shit. That's why Lieberman has been such an eager attack dog for the right ever since he lost his primary in 2006 — he wants, and wants badly, to redress what the left did to him. He's not actually rightwing. He's anti-anti-left, and ferociously so.

MEGAN: Well, you know, if you want to be a hawk, don't expect a bunch of doves to come flocking to you.

SPENCER: He's obsessed with his own transcendent righteousness. Whatever, if Obama is going to tell me who the pick is by texting me, then McCain will announce his pick by telegraph-machine. A cavalcade of whimsy!

MOE: Ohhhhh mann, I'm still like on Seattle time or something
MEGAN: I'm on "got home at midnight after an 8 hour drive" fog.
MOE: What should we talk about? Yikes!
MEGAN: Oh, see, I was going to suggest that we talk about how Alaskan Republican Senator Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens was indicted on 7 counts yesterday, but fetish hookers is way more prurient. Also, rumors around the courts here in D.C. is that touchy-feely ass-grabbing Congressman Don Young is next. Actually, that's just been the rumor for a while, but doesn't it sound cooler when I semi-source it?
MOE: Isn't just the fact that Alaska has two senators corruption in itself?
MEGAN: Well, they do have a whole 100,000 more people than Washington, DC, so of course they deserve 2 Senators and a Congressman and D.C. shouldn't get either.
Geek moment: Did you know that there are more people in Hawai'i than Alaska? Like, almost twice as many.
MOE: Yes. Does that surprise you? Any more than, like, this? Oh god I need coffee.
MEGAN: Back to Stevens, the most hilarious thing of all is that they couldn't charge him with bribery because sometimes he just took the lavish gifts from Veco and told them to fuck off! It's sort of like how Congressmen and Senators feel about campaign contributions only flashier (now including a Land Rover and a Viking Grill!).
As a white resident of upstate New York, I particularly like this statement of Sharpton's:

"We have all made mistakes. We have all erred, and we ought not try to sugar coat when we err."

Oh, really, Al?
MOE: The Ted Stevens thing reminds me of when I used to cover Nike for the Journal, and the guys from SLAM just couldn't figure out why I wasn't allowed to take free shoes. "Sure, it's bribery, but when EVERYONE bribes you you're still objective!"
MEGAN: "As long as you 'slam' them later," right? (Apologies for the bad but necessary pun).Speaking of apologies...
MOE: Jesus this totally makes the AMA's timing look COMPLETELY NORMAL!

In February, the Senate apologized for atrocities committed against Native Americans, and the body apologized in 2005 for standing by during a lynching campaign against African Americans throughout much of the past century. Twenty years ago, Congress apologized for interning Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.

MEGAN: Well, you know, they're really, really worried about reparations. That's, like, a completely legitimate concern.
MOE: As I'm sure is the fact that there is a lot in those Jim Crow laws some Americans still would like to resurrect! Sorry, that's a year old, but I didn't remember it until today.
MEGAN: Luckily for Jonah and at the behest of plenty of Republican state governments, states are passing government-ID laws to make it more difficult for people to vote, especially poor people. You heard, right, that the first people fucked over by that law were a bunch of nuns and students? But it was the Democratic primary, so that was the intention, anyway, to keep Democrats from voting, so hooray Indiana for designing a law that actually works as it was intended. Sort of hooray. More like, um, FUCK YOU Mitch Daniels. Cialis was marketed under his tenure at Lilly, by the way. You knew he was a pharmaceutical company exec before he was OMB Director before he was Governor of Indiana, right?
MOE: Uh no but doesn't that just make this world make a little more sense! That and this guy. Um I just blew some of my literacy reading this. Also, is it just me or is it surprising that nuns of all people would not have their IDs ready? I know they probably don't get carded too often, but isn't it in the nun personality type?
MEGAN: But why would they need an ID? And, yes, OMG, can we please, please, please stop dumbing Michelle Obama down so that people think she's more like them? Please? It makes my brain hurty. Oh, and did you see that the International Olympics Committee negotiated a secret deal with the Chinese to limit journalists' internet access?
MOE: God everytime I think I know how full of shitheads the IOC is I am proved wrong. Who are these IOC officials anyway? Hey, maybe there's a job for Mitt Romney!
MEGAN: Someone's got to give him on eventually if McCain won't. His hair is too bulletproof to retire.
MOE: So $15,000 a month is Rielle Hunter's hush money . I feel like we should do a poll on how much you'd ask if you'd been knocked up by a filthy rich presidential candidate. I think fifteen grand is good, because there's not a whole lot an unimaginative person like myself can't do on that money, but it's not so disgusting people will question her genuine love for the bastard. But hey, where's the "real father" Andrew Young in all of this?
MEGAN:Apparently, getting paid off by the same middleman! That's $180,000 a year, or, if it continues at the same rate, $3.24 million over the next 18, not including tuition. I don't think I'll make $3 million in the next 18 years. Also, can we just discuss how exactly the Enquirer knew that Rielle was in the hotel, whose name she checked in under and when Edwards would show? Because between that and the news that she's negotiating a paid interview, I don't think the "hush" part of the money is working.

MOE: Good morning! I can't imagine what we'll be discussing today...
The economy?

MEGAN: The EPA smog standards?
The priest that won a science prize and craps all over intelligent design?

MOE: The sad sad liquidation of Carlyle Capital?
Oooh oooh, this is fun...the merger of the Nymex and the Chicago mercantile exchange!

MEGAN: Um, that's prolly more your beat than mine.
The new $5 bill?

MOE: BUT SERIOUSLY GUYS. All anyone wants to talk about is "Kristen." Should we talk about "Kristen"?

MEGAN: Her song sucks.

But I added it to my MySpace profile anyway in case she wised up and took hers down... but apparently this is a boost for her career.

MOE: She's not a monster! That's a preemptive strike against Samantha Power! And if she takes hers down the song is gone, lady. Do you know nothing of MySpace? I was actually a little surprised by her MySpace profile. And is it just me or did I detect a note of pride in her mom's voice when she told the Times her daughter "can handle someone like the governor." I mean, lady, I'd say that's some rose-colored glasses but okay. It was also a little absurd that the Times called her lyrics out for their dated slang. Um, for the record, Serge Kovaleski, "boo" remains a term of endearment in youth culture circles! Athough I guess it is used more ironically, and mostly by white people now, but isn't that splitting hairs kinda?

MEGAN: Also, her brother said she's the best sister ever. I'm guessing he's not the one who abused her. Also, um, she can "handle" someone like the governor? Lady, she "handled" him alright. She also presumably sucked him, possibly teabagged him, allowed him to insert his penis into one if not two other orifices and either had or faked one/more orgasms, then took his money as payment for services rendered.
Like, seriously, this whole whore-fucking thing skeeves me out.
Like, what is wrong with men sometimes?

s

MOE: We'll never really know. I mean, I guess Newsweek and the Washington Post are sort of on the case, but as the Post story points out, you never hear from these guys about their infidelities. Why they did it. What they weren't thinking.

MOE: Except that there's something primal, hormonal, blah blah blah. I dunno. I mean, I get urges to cheat when I'm in long term relationships, they're just usually overwhelmed by my desire to not hurt the loved one in question. But maybe that's a measure of empathy the men don't get born with, I dunno. I have no idea why this scandal, in particular, seems to encapsulate something dark and hopeless about the state of gender relations. I mean, it's not like he fucked hookers every single night. $80,000 does not exactly go a long way someplace like the Emperor's Club. You could blow it all in a few days. In fact, that was probably part of the thrill. Like with gambling addicts. They like get off on the destructive waste of it. Or something. And they are always Chinese, the last people you'd expect to blow a hundred grand in one night at the craps table. You know?

MEGAN: I agree with the dark and hopeless state of gender relations part. This is like, some serious disconnect for me between men and women and it's not like I fuck for love all the time.
Like, the whole excuse that men are "paying" for it in either case? That makes me want to beat people about the head and shoulders with an umbrella.

MOE: Here's the other depressing thing about it for MOE: being a high class hooker seemed to me an appropriate job choice for someone like Kristen. She is very pretty and yearns, obviously, to be noticed, but her MySpace page shows that she doesn't really have the skills of self-promotion necessary to find quick success in all the "industries" that value self-promotion. Some were taken at unflattering angles. Some of them make her look chunkier than she really is. Her voice is unspectacular, but so is everyone's. She is no Tila Tequila.

MEGAN: That's probably true. She just looks kind of like your average pretty girl in most of those shots on MySpace, and her little "bio" piece is way too long and rambling to be an effective self-promotional tool, let alone even an effective internet dating profile.
And if she can, you know, actually respectably belt "Respect" (which, I'm sure is an untrue story) then she can probably actually sing.

MOE: Okay, new topic time. Seriously, right? There is not that much more to say, right? I'm assuming you watched Keith Olbermann's epic sermon to Hillary Clinton? It is very long. It is supposed to be ten minutes, but it will take 25 minutes to watch on any normal computer.

MEGAN: Oh, God, it Keith going to stop being cute once I watch that? Because my sister (who I was visiting) doesn't have cable to I missed everything until this morning.

MOE: I mean, you know, he takes himself just a LITTLE bit seriously.

MEGAN: But I'll watch that if you read this horrifying Paglia screed in which she calls Hillary shrill, dismissed the existence of sexism, called Hillary a "tunnel-vision middle manager" and called the Emperor's hookers "valiant."
It made me have to get out of bed to wash the taste of bile out of my mouth.

MOE: It looks like there won't be a transcript on the MSNBC website until 3 p.m. And I'll read that if you also take a look at this story on Obama and McCain, how they sort of pointlessly hate each other, etc.
We shall reconvene!

Um, for the record, this:

Never has the soppy emotionalism of old-guard feminist reasoning been on such open and embarrassing display.

MEGAN: I mean, I totally wanted to agree with her, and then she swerved and went off into Crazy Town and I was like... really? Camille? Shrill? There is no sexism anymore? Because, um, you know, I got some stories.

MOE: Oh my GOD, wait, this whole section where she expresses disappointment and dismay re Rush Libaugh...

I take the ballot very seriously, because it took women so long to win it. I am very unsettled by tactical voting — that is, using one's vote as a stratagem in what Rush describes as "gamesmanship": "It's all about winning," he has repeatedly said to callers protesting the Hillary stunt. But hasn't Rush's massive appeal always been based on his adherence to core principles rather than to narrow partisanship?

MEGAN: She's listens to Rush Limbaugh regularly! That enough was enough for me to go, wait, I though Paglia was a femi-Nazi, not a Dittohead.

MOE: Well you know she's undefinable. An iconoclast etc. No matter who you are, you're going to agree with her sometimes. But...like...Limbaugh? Principles? Is that how you stay on the radio 5 hours a day or whatever? By soberly and eloquently addressing one's core principles? It's just an absurd statement. Whatev. Blargh.
Did you watch Keith?

MEGAN: I am watching it, but I am becoming a sad panda because he is, indeed, getting less and less cute. Why does he insist on randomly emphasizing words? OMG, he's now smacking his desk!
Um, although I completely agree with every single thing he's said about Ferraro and that Clinton's strategists are, um, not good to say the least.
MOE: Yeah, and the longwindedness of it is kind of impressive.

MEGAN: The longwindedness makes me think he's sort of a Clinton supporter and is actually really offended and hates her advisers.
MOE: Well, it makes me think he is no longer a Clinton supporter.
MEGAN: OMG, maybe he's just trying to get her to fire Mark Penn? Because, really, I would vote for her if she fired Mark Penn.
MOE: Okay, so I have no idea what America is thinking about all this BUT. He did erase all her delegate gains in Texas and Ohio with Wyoming and Mississippi...wait a second, why would you vote for her if she fired him? That I just don't get. She fired Dick Morris too. SPEAKING OF WHORES. The point is, she hired them both in the first place. Whatever. No use for it anymore. I just hope he is in Pennsylvania right the fuck now. Wait, where is he right the fuck now?
MEGAN: They're all in D.C. to try out that "voting" thing they all get actually paid to do.

Oh, and as of the results of the Texas caucuses yesterday, technically Obama picked up more delegates in Texas than Hillary.
And, Dick Morris's teeth are this weird yellow-y grey now (having just watched Hillary The Movie), which makes me think he probably still sucks dirty whore toes.
MOE: Okay, JOHN MCCAIN. I have been meaning to address the issue of John McCain. Will he continue letting the media listen to his every passing thought on the campaign trail. Will he persist in hating Obama and does he actually have a reason to do so, and isn't it kind of funny how people are talking about Mitt Romney as VP when this Esquire piece makes it fairly clear McCain hates Mitt Romney. That's why they "heart Huck." I'm just burdening you with all this, by the way, because I had insomnia last night and I didn't want to read the piece about insomnia in Esquire so instead I read about George Clooney watching the 2 girls 1 cup video and John McCain hating Mitt Romney.

MEGAN: HA! Um, except for W. and Cheney, most Republicans actually seem to hate their VPs (Reagan-Bush, Bush-Quayle, whomever ran with Dole), so Mitt makes perfect sense. But McCains'a maverick, see, so I think he might actual pick someone he doesn't abhor which is not Mitt Romney. Unfortunately, it's also not a single conservative Republican that he supposedly needs to re-energize the base and he's trying to me less maverick-y to win his own voters, so Romney seems a safe bet.

• Eliot Spitzer was fucking hookers the whole time he was fucking Wall Street assholes, maybe even longer, and he still hasn't resigned, probably because he is such a whore he wants to soak up the whole week's news cycle for himself and make us all forget there's a campaign to cover... [NY Post]
  
• So yeah, as you can imagine, that was enough time for a few of the girls to figure out who the fuck he was. [NY Post]
  
• And the investigation began as all great investigations do: suspicious movements of cash near a Dunkin Donuts. [NYT]
  
• Oh, crap! A primary tonight! In Mississippi. Obama is expected to win, but it's the margin that counts; if he wins 19 out of 33 delegates he can cancel out all Hillary's gains in Ohio & Texas. Seems doable, right? Says a black restaurant owner of Obama's success: "You can't believe it. It's the greatest thing since salt." [WSJ]
  
• So, normally the market would have gone crazyyyy just on account of Eliot Spitzer getting stripped of every last shred of his dignity but today it needed the Fed to promise to print new money and give it to banks or something. [WSJ]
  
• This is good because bankers don't have much to do with no money. "Some bankers in the lending business are reporting to work two days a week. 'If they say they're busy, they're lying,' said one head of investment banking." [WSJ]

• Oil is $109 a barrel, therefore our trade deficit is still widening, but it's not as bad as predicted because the price of food is going up and we actually export some of that, yay agriculture subsidies! [WSJ]
• Merrill Lynch is predicting the worst recession since the 1970s! [WSJ]
• Admiral William Fallon resigned abruptly after being quoted criticizing the troop surge and Iran policy in... Esquire. He's a top Middle East commander. [WSJ]
• Think that has anything to do with the strange timing of Martina Navratilova renouncing her American citizenship over her shame for George W. Bush? Or was it, like, the 700,000th Iraq war death that finally pushed her over the edge? The Doug Feith book? [Guardian]
• Romney says he'd "take veep" for McCain. This is not quite as presumptuous as Bill Clinton saying Obama would "take veep" for his wife, but I hope to God it isn't as likely, because McCain is off in Israel or somesuch — that's how badly he doesn't have to campaign right now — and he has a pretty decent chance of actually choosing the nation's next vice president, only to die. [Politico]
• The media still won't let up on Hillary Clinton's tax returns. [ABC]
• Germaine Greer thinks Hillary is "bossy" and "manipulative" and she swears up and down it's not because she's a misogynist. [AP]
• Oh wait, that aside about straight uprotected anal sex being safer than unprotected vaginal sex? That came out of my ass. It was not meant to take seriously. It is actually less safe for many STDs. Use condoms, folks!

MOE:: So okay, tonight is a really important night. Hillary needs to win or else, well, as she told Jon Stewart, it's pretty pathetic.
MEGAN: I have to say, I watched that and she didn't cackle even once.
MEGAN: Although a darker brown suit would've been better.
MOE:: She did a really good job. And that was a funny answer. Everyone's really impressed that she's not "acting like a loser" yet, you know? Like at this Eva Longoria-moderated town hall meeting in Texas yesterday. Um, did you know Eva Longoria is a former Miss Corpus Christi? Because that was news to me.
MEGAN: Whoa, that is news to me, too. But, yay for a short girl winning a beauty contest!
9:05 AM
MEGAN: I mean, the problem becomes that if she actually doesn't pull it out today, does she continue to act like a winner and try to keep going through Pennsylvania anyway.
MOE:: Okay, so today's big news to me is that Alex P. Keaton would be an Obamican. This revelation comes to us via his ghostwriter Gary David Goldberg. "I think Obama's slogan is very similar to Alex's own personal mantra: "Of Course I Can." Now ha ha ha yes that is fiction, but the rationale behind it sort of mirrors the rationale behind this nonfiction blog post by Netscape co-founder and gazillionaire Marc Andreessen, who also gave money to Mitt Romney. The Obamicans are, to me, the most fascinating niche of the Obama constituency, because they are willing to discard all their ill-conceived ideology just to get someone motherfucking smart in the White House.
The other person, or their software, refused the request.
9:10 AM
MOE:: Okay, so today's big news to me is that Alex P. Keaton would be an Obamican. This revelation comes to us via his ghostwriter Gary David Goldberg. "I think Obama's slogan is very similar to Alex's own personal mantra: "Of Course I Can."
MOE:: Now ha ha ha yes that is fiction, but the rationale behind it sort of mirrors the rationale behind this nonfiction blog post by Netscape co-founder and gazillionaire Marc Andreessen, who also gave money to Mitt Romney. The Obamicans are, to me, the most fascinating niche of the Obama constituency, because they are willing to discard all their ill-conceived ideology just to get someone motherfucking smart in the White House.
MEGAN: Well, but presumably they consider their ideology to be somewhat less ill-conceived most of the time.
MEGAN: I mean, do they not consider Clinton smart? Because she's not stupid. And neither's McCain, even if I disagree with him politically. So why are these guys going for Obama, who is legitimately considered to be far more liberal than Hillary by more than just the National Journal?
MOE:: Yeah and it also gets to this nagging curiosity: Is Obama really a Leftist? Does he really hate NAFTA? What did NAFTA ever do to him?
MOE:: I like this snippet from the Andressen blog post:

We then asked, well, what about foreign policy — should we be concerned that you just don't have much experience there?
He said, directly, two things.
First, he said, I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts on foreign policy — and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.
Being a fan of blunt answers, I liked that one.

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.