• Remember Oliver Clark? He asked a question at Tuesday's debate on the economy and John McCain told him he "probably" hadn't ever heard of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Well, it turns out he has a B.A. in PoliSci, a Masters in Legal Studies, and is in the midst of a Masters in Public Administration. So, he'd heard of them both, and he thought McCain's remark was condescending — and he's right. [MSNBC]
• Oh, speaking of telegraphing contempt and racism, former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating called Obama "a guy of the street" and suggested he should admit to the drug use he's already admitted to. Frank ought to admit that he's just trying out something BET founder Bob Johnson tried on Hillary's behalf in January in South Carolina that failed so spectacularly. [Huffington Post, NY Times]
• Other things John McCain is stealing from Hillary? His mortgage buyout plan. He thinks that'll make us fickle ladies vote for him. [UPI]

• If you hadn't yet been asked to swallow enough bullshit from the McCain campaign, Sarah Palin told conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham today that she and John McCain answer questions every single day and Obama never answers anything. The Bible Spice refused to be interviewed by Ingraham again. [Think Progress, PoliticoThere's a lot of scary, scary anger out there among Republicans, mostly because they think they're losing. Suck it up, assholes. [Politico, Washington Post]
• In that, though, they're just like their scary, anger-addled idol. [The New Republic]
• The fact that Obama has enough money to buy a 30 minute advertising spot on CBS (and possibly NBC and Fox) is unlikely to help McCain's temper or the mood of his supporters. [Politico]
• But it does distract them all from how the Dow is now down below 9,000 for the first time since 2003 and the Bush Administration has decided to give up on the remainder of their free market principles and nationalize more of our financial system. [Washington Post, NY Times]

STEVE: Shalom and here we go. It won't be the first time I've talked about something I didn't actually see.

MEGAN: Well, you saw it but in true Jezebel fashion, you saw it intoxicated. This is the first one I actually watched stone-cold sober because I couldn't stop typing long enough to drink the bottle of wine I opened.

STEVE: My insights are admittedly influenced by the haze of a nice, Australian Cabernet-Shiraz blend. Yes, "that one."

MEGAN: So you do remember some things! But, basically, Obama won and nobody asked anything that wasn't pre-screened because they didn't want to get yelled at by Tom Brokaw like he kept yelling at Obama and McCain.

STEVE: Yes, I remember mostly the focus group that Katie Couric did after, and the undecidededs didn't like "that one" very well. Maybe, as Maureen posited this morning, it was a cross between "the one" and "that woman," but it seemed dismissive and odd.

MEGAN: I mean, it's actually something you say to, like, your kids, isn't it? I thought it was very infantilizing.

STEVE: I wouldn't know about kids, but my friend Suzanne is here and says she'd never really talk to her kids like that. I would, however, sometimes talk to a boyfriend like that. And that's not a good sign.

MEGAN: Wait! Wasn't it you that sent me that magazine cover of them kissing?

STEVE: YES I DID and you didn't pick it up. I thought it was going to be a big deal. But maybe the progressives won't get mad at The Progressive?

MEGAN: It was just a little too... something.

STEVE: I'm not even sure what that was supposed to mean. But I can say, without a doubt, that I wouldn't kiss any man who pointed at me and called me "that one" in public.

MEGAN: You know, I did kiss a dude who later called me "that one" in public in what he thought was a jocular way. I accused him of using his brother's terminal illness as a way to get pussy, so I guess I didn't appreciate it.

STEVE: Speaking of our rights to kiss anyone we want, I thought it was a little odd, and disappointing, that not a word was said about the Supreme Court last night, two days into the new term and with at least two judges barely holding on.

MEGAN: Well, but Sarah Palin covered that, right? [I crack myself up some times]

STEVE: Every swing state voter I know - and I recently met a mom in Ohio who WANTS to vote GOP, but is really being persuaded by the high court argument.

MEGAN: Because of Roe? That's interesting. On the other hand, if the Democratic Party can win the Presidency on the economy and the Republican can't gin people up on social issues like abortion and gay marriage because independent voters have realized that it's craven and whatever, that's not a bad thing, right?

STEVE: I really think the court issue is ALMOST as persuasive as the "Jesus the stock market crashed 500 points again" issue. You know, Bill Maher said on Friday, and I agree, that it almost always requires a national catastrophe to get progressives elected. BUT DO AMERICANS NOT GET THAT THE SUPREME COURT COULD BE A NATIONAL CATASTROPHE TOO?

MEGAN: Well, 54 percent of the country thinks abortion should stay legal and the more they put the crazies on TV, the more people go, um, those people are cray-cray. Like, they should give that crazy anti-gay guy from Kansas more press.

STEVE: I bet Fred Phelps votes based on the Supreme Court!

MEGAN: Totally! But everyone hates him. Harley riders hate him. He's the antithesis of everything the anti-gay movement is trying to pretend to be, which is faux-tolerant. You know, like Sarah Palin. It's okay if you, like, have to be gay, but the government shouldn't do anything special for your heathen, social-norm defying self. That would be giving you "special" rights. Because the right to, say, marry or to have equal protection under the law is "special."

STEVE: Sarah says she "tolerates" the gays. Does that make us feel better?

MEGAN: Like, she doesn't want to gas them or anything! It doesn't make me feel better. What is there about gay people to "tolerate"? It's not like gayness is something that might rub off or something.

STEVE: OK and so if they spent 60 minutes on the economy last night, we should spend a few minutes on it here. Angela Merkel is on the front of the NYT business section today, looking very stressed.

MEGAN: Well, I think I know why.

STEVE: And as someone who was raised by a single mother and appreciates the (much better) grasp that women have on pocket book issues than men, I get worried when they look panicked. I mean, a friend emailed last night to tell me that he and his boyfriend decided not to buy expensive, designer jeans after the 500 drop yesterday. And when the gay men stop pumping money into the economy for lavish, unessential items like Italian jeans, we have problems.

MEGAN: Well, that alone explains the 500 point drop in the Dow yesterday. I have no doubt that Angela Merkel doesn't want to be presiding over an economic crisis brought on by the financial crisis and credit crunch by her personal masseur.

STEVE: I mean, when $2 trillion of retirement money is gone . . . and gay men can't buy jeans . . . is our salvation really going to be found in cutting a $3 million overhead projector for a planetarium? And, like, if they did buy the projector for the planetarium, and Sarah could see Jupiter from her seat, could we make her an astronaut and send her to the moon or something?

MEGAN: Okay, first off, I really like planetariums. I'm just sayin'. Fuck McCain for hating on planetariums. Second off, he's also going to personally renegotiate everyone's mortgages. Except mine. And yours if you had one. I mean, not really "everyone" as much as people whose houses lost value because they bought stuff for absurdist prices. And took out absurdly high mortgages. And only if they're old, to make up for the massive cuts in Medicare spending he's planning.

STEVE: And McCain's mortgage plan is totally borrowed from Hillary, which was borrowed from her history lessons on the Great Depression.

MEGAN: Also, did you get the sense that they made that up on the bus on the way there? Sort of like how McCain's all, I know how to kill bin Laden! I do! Just watch! I will go into some place I won't name and kill bin Laden quietly, because generally invading a sovereign nation goes over way better if you just hope they don't notice.

STEVE: But if you pronounce Pakistan as Pah-kee-stahn, the whole things has an air of credibility.

MEGAN: Just like "new-cue-lerr" makes it sound less scary?

STEVE: You betcha!

MEGAN: Such as!

STEVE: So Olbermann says Palin is the one palling around with terrorists — the Alaska Independence Party.

MEGAN: Well, you know, just because they advocated potentially violent secession, we sponsored by Iran and hate Our Freedoms doesn't makes them terrorists... Oh, wait, let's just call Olbermann and pinko Commie in the tank for Obama.

STEVE: The AIP founder, Olbermann says, said that, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government, and I won't be buried under their damn flag"

MEGAN: Why doesn't he just go to Canada? It's, like, right the fuck there.

STEVE: Don't ruin Canada for the rest of us! I hear Montreal is quite a party.
But where is this tank everyone keeps talking about? It must be pretty crowded in there by now.

MEGAN: And kind of sexy. I mean, Olbermann's in it with Rachel Maddow and Bill Keller of the NY Times, who I saw on Saturday and is kind of silver foxy.

STEVE: Is Rachel Maddow DRIVING the tank? Margaret Cho says you gotta have a lesbian to read the map.

MEGAN: Well, I'll bet Rachel is driving and Suze Orman is navigating through the minefields.

STEVE: Are we going to end up with Suze or Warren Buffet as treasury secretary anyway? Can't Warren Buffet just bail us out of this . . . maybe with a little help from Bill Gates?

MEGAN: I know, Warren Buffet as Treasury Secretary? I was like, dude, McCain, seriously, you had a whole series of commercials about how stupid celebrity is and now you're nominating the only financier people will recognize by name as Treasury Secretary? I mean, you know he wanted to be honest and say "Phil Gramm," because McCain, too, thinks we're a nation of whiners and this is just a mental depression.

STEVE: I mean, I bank at Wachovia, or Citibank, or Wells Fargo OR WHATEVER IT IS THIS MORNING and I'd feel much more secure banking at Warren Buffet's house.

MEGAN: I'd feel more secure banking from under my mattress at this stage.
If anyone is going to fuck over my money, it really should be me.

MEGAN: So, I was super curious about your take on McCain's speech on the economy. When he got to the part where he wants to let investors who bid up properties swing, I'm not going to pretend I wasn't nodding along.

MOE: Ugh, Hillary Clinton, arguably referring to John McCain's plan as Herbert Hooverism is not so different from referring to your husband's repeated questioning of Obama's patriotism as McCarthyism, except, you know, that you did it yourself, and that Herbert Hoover's policies left people to actually, like, starve, which I think is a little extreme.

MEGAN: Do most people really know who Herbert Hoover is or like, even better, why he sucked? I mean, I don't want to insult the American electorate but I'd bet if I went somewhere outside of D.C., it would be pretty damn hit and miss.

MOE: I mean, here's the thing. From a personal perspective I think, well, I know my parents have refinanced like 75 times. And my parents are neither uninformed nor really financially struggling, they just don't have the best balance sheets. A deep fallout in the housing market is psychologically impactful because that's everyone's nest egg, their real sense of How Things Are. But a redefined sense of How Things Are is ... inevitable? Desirable, even? And in terms of decent hardworking Americans etc. etc. how many people who have bought houses at three or four times the price to rent ratio not because they are greedy but because they desire the sort of security that renegotiating a lease every year cannot afford us? If people buy homes in the pursuit of security, it's not a bad idea to allow prices to fall. It seems like the answer lies with programs like this one in Baltimore that help people renegotiate their mortgages with these much-strapped lenders. But I'd need to see the numbers. The struggle is just that the federal intervention in cases like this disproportionately helps the wealthy and the financial institutions, and the only reason they are important is because they are the custodians of the market sentiment ergo the liquidity ergo the percentage GDP contraction. Ha ha ha I just said "ergo" in the Crappy Hour. Anyway, it's frustrating. But back to easy target. Just what percentage of Americans were homeowners during the Hoover administration again? I'd have to think it is hardly comparable to the present day.

MEGAN: Wow, ask and ye shall receive. About 2/3s of America households are homeowners in 2000 compared to 50% in 1930.

MOE: Well that is a very high number for 1930. I wonder what the price to rent ratio was back then, and that of the average cost of a house compared to the per capita GDP, and how big the average household was, and the size of the mortgages etc.

MEGAN: Also, by the way, in 1930 the places with the lowest ownership rates were in the South, and many of those states (Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina) have higher-than-average ownership rates today.

MOE: What is more, I wonder if anyone could forsee a time when funeral parlors were targets for gun violence. Because that's what I read on the front page of the WSJ today and it was a lot more depressing to me than this stock market news.

MEGAN: D.C., lacking statehood, does not. Ahem.

MOE: This is an interesting story on the wave of foreclosures triggering a whole new round of speculation.

In some beaten-down markets, the price cuts have been stark. The Detroit Board of Realtors recently found that home sales in the city (excluding suburbs) in the first two months of this year jumped 48% from a year earlier, to 1,540. The average home price there sank 54% to about $22,000.

MEGAN: It always struck me how stupid it is of the banks in many cases to let go of properties for far less than the mortgage is for, but part of that seems to be none of them are actually in the area/care about their customers. For instance, one of my close friends was negotiating a couple years ago with an owner facing foreclosure and offered less than the supposed appraised value and the bank wouldn't accept it. So the bank foreclosed, she went to buy it at auction and paid another $50K less for it in the end. Of course, the bank people were all in Jersey or something so they didn't realize the market here was already sliding and didn't see any point to negotiating. The fact that the government has to step in and possibly lecture banks and force them to realize its in their own long-term best interests not to foreclose on the world is so fucked up. But I guess foreclosing raises share prices in the short term and there's always a golden parachute waiting for next quarter's earnings report.

MOE: You just said my favorite three words: LONG TERM INTEREST. The American economy has no sense of its long term interest. Companies are always talking about how...being Green! Opening departments dedicated to Corporate Social Responsibility! ... is in their "long term interest." Give me a break, guys, we live in the ADD Dynasty. No executive or director with any sort of authority over these things gives a shit about any term of time past the point at which their options vest. Most of them aren't thinking much more than a fiscal year or quarter ahead. That is the problem with the market and the economy at large. It can be sooo profitable to milk some short-term legislative loophole, short term investor sentiment, short-term arbitrage possibility, that it becomes quaint to even say the words "long term." And by the way, now we should probably talk about something els.

MEGAN: Oh, right, everyone hates when we geek out on economics, except when they don't.

MOE: Oh god, but to this end, Clear Channel is collapsing. Clear Channel, the representation of how then ruthless pursuit of short term shareholder value under the guise of long term strategy rendered the American music industry completely banal in a tiny space of time...
Richard Mellon Scaife. Why is this story at the top of Memeorandum?

MEGAN: Wow, he looks like a creepy dude. How befitting.

MOE: Side note: Libby Copeland of the Wash Post was less enamored of Meghan McCain than GQ. That said, she seemed much cagier and less charming in this story, and maybe that's because she was.

MEGAN: Maybe she killed his cats.
Er, I meant Hillary, not Meghan. Yeah, Libby's piece was much less puffy than the GQ one, much more focused on her use of the word "like" and her fashion sense. Not like I do that alot or anything, and I would never focus on someone's sartorial choices, like, ever.

MOE: And there is Obama adviser McPeak McSpeaking again, this time pissing off the Jews. (Last time it was the Clintons.) Fun!
Is it another slow day? Because I was thinking last night before I went to bed it wasn't going to be as bad a day as yesterday.
OH, shit, I know what I wanted to talk about!

MEGAN: Hey, I have to say, I take exception to the line in that McPeak article that conflates his love of the booze and his hate of the Jews. I love booze and don't hate Jews.

I also don't blame them for the failings of American foreign policy.
MOE: The Tonya Harding option. Gore as Oksana!

MEGAN: Stop blaming the alcohol! Alcohol doesn't make people anti-Semites, it just makes them stupid enough to talk about it.
OMG, you just make me think of Al Gore in a little white skating costume!

Excuse me while I go rinse the taste of bile from my mouth.

MOE: Apparently the new T-shirt is "No drama, vote Obama."
But is the drama actually helping the Democratic Party?