[Mumbai, November 23. Image via Getty]

To go with India-attacks-1year-child by Phil Hazlewood In a picture taken on November 23, 2009 Indian Viju Lakshman Chavan (R) holds her baby daughter Tejaswini (L), who is nicknamed 'Goli', 'Bullet' in Hindi because she was born during the Mumbai attacks last year, in the Colaba Woods Garden in Mumbai. Viju went into labour at the city's Cama and Albless Hospital on November 26, 2008, just as two heavily armed gunmen began stalking the building's corridors and eight others laid siege to India's financial capital. Tejaswini, already two weeks early, couldn't wait. She was born at 10.55 pm, about one hour after the gunmen took up position in the hospital. AFP PHOTO/ Indranil MUKHERJEE (Photo credit should read INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images)

• Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius has removed her name from Cabinet consideration. [The Hill]
• New York Governor David Paterson wants to be your next President because "Once you go black, you don't go back." [Politico]
• Fred Thompson is so cheap that he's renting his apartment out for the inauguration. [Huffington Post]
• The Supreme Court rejected the crazypants challenge to Obama's citizenship. [Politico]

• Your tax dollars at work: the State Department is now on Twitter. [Washington Independent]
• Karl Rove's gonna write a book about everyone who was mean to George Bush. Florists in D.C. are already planning on mass deliveries when the index is out. [CNN]
• President Bush's new neighbors are concerned that their community might become a target after he moves in. Now they know how all the residents of D.C. feel. [Raw Story]
• All the women out there who were concerned about Chris Matthews' run for the Senate in Pennsylvania might be able to breathe a sigh of relief. His brother doesn't think he'll leave television. [The New Republic, Politico]
• Christie Hefner's apparently leaving Playboy Enterprises... to angle for a job with the Obama Administration? [Portfolio]
• Israeli Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit is trying to grant Sandra Samuel, the Indian nanny who rescued Moeshe Holtzberg during the Mumbai terror attacks, the status of "Righteous among the Nations" to allow her to stay in Israel as long as she wishes. The honor is given to non-Jews who save the lives of Jews. [Associated Press]
• Pakistan actually arrested one of the suspected Mumbai plotters, by the way. [Huffington Post]
• In your official holiday-themed uplifting end to the roundup, homeless men at Detroit's Mariners Inn shelter and treatment center are raising $500 for each of 4 poor families they are adopting for the holidays. [Breitbart]

JASON: Good morning, sunshine.

MEGAN: Harrumph. My mother used to mock me in the mornings like that when I lived at home.

JASON: I'm sure your mother didn't see it as mocking you.

MEGAN: No, you haven't met my parents, mocking one another's foibles is part of our deal. We tend to talk a lot about my father's bathroom habits, too.

JASON: The whole Carpentier family coat-of-arms must be disturbing to look at!

MEGAN: Holidays are fun in my house. One year, after chili was consumed, we forced my father to fart outside, only it was so cold that when he went out there his asshole puckered up too tight to squeeze it out. We still tell that story with glee.

JASON: Wow. Now if that doesn't read like the lost verse of the Little Drummer Boy! "My asshole is frozen shut, pa-rump-pump-pump-pum!"

MEGAN: The real problem is finding a news story to tie to that, which I'm at a loss for, so I'm just going to embed "Jizz in My Pants" at this moment, which is what prompted all my scatological Christmas memories.

Which reminded me of my friend ****, who about 10 years ago around this time told me how he did that exact same thing over Thanksgiving break at a strip club in front of all his friends. And, finally, I can embed a news story. Indian authorities are making the Mumbai terrorist parade around in nothing but his undies to prevent him from killing himself. I'm assuming that, if he were like my friend, keeping him in his underwear might actually provoke suicide.

JASON: "Jizz In My Pants" will be the first single from INCREDIBAD, by Andy Samberg's old comedy group, The Lonely Island, who are the people behind the SNL Digital Shorts.

MEGAN: For whatever reason, I read "Lonely Island" as "Long Island," but that might be because that's from whence my quick-to-the-draw friend hails.

JASON: Look, I'm just glad that someone has a definition of "extreme lengths" that stops at "making him wear nothing but underwear" and doesn't involve the sort of things that make Mike Mukasey jizz in his pants. "I hook electrodes, to a brown man's balls and I JIZZ IN MY PANTS."

MEGAN: You know whom else I'm betting lets loose with a couple of teaspoons-full now and again? Michael Chertoff, when he's listening to illegal wiretap tapes. Also, a ton of liberals when Bush said "Welcome to my hanging" this weekend.

JASON: Oh, no doubt. Though Chertoff mostly spews graveyard dust out of his dessicated ghoul-cock. You know Chertoff is a guy that Baby Jesus hates the most. "Waaah. Living-dead abomination! Jizzing graveyeard dust!"

MEGAN: He is, without a doubt, the creepiest-looking guy in Washington. You'd think that he'd look less creepy in person, that maybe it's the TV lights or something. But, no. He really does look exactly that frightening.

JASON: Yeah. And you know, he's not scary-looking? Like we don't even get any sort of terrorist deterrence out of the fact that he's the creepiest fuck in the world. He'd actually be better off if he drew a mad face on a paper bag and wore it around Washington. I guess after Obama takes office it's back to the Jim Rose Sideshow with that guy!

MEGAN: Nah, his wife might get mad if he wore it outside of the bedroom.

JASON: Does he have a wife? I naturally assumed the man fucked mummies, like Dick Morris.

MEGAN: Looking like Chertoff does have it's advantages, though. Like, he always has a Halloween costume. I mean, who does a better Holocaust victim than Michael Chertoff, really?

JASON: OHHH!

MEGAN: Too soon?

JASON: No, no, this was inevitable! Of course, Janet Napolitano has all those qualities that Ed Rendell finds so fascinating.

MEGAN: Tits? Tell me Ed Rendell isn't a titty-fucker. Girls with big boobs recognize 'em a mile away.

JASON: He said: "Janet's perfect for that job. Because for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family. Perfect. She can devote, literally, 19-20 hours a day to it."

MEGAN: And, in context of titty-fucking, that statement becomes truly hilarious. If Ed Rendell had a bigger dick, I'd say she'd need a chin guard to prevent bruising. But he doesn't, so I won't. 19-20 hours, though, he'd' best buy stock in Astroglide.

JASON: It's important to point out, AGAIN, something I pointed out throughout the election. And that is that Ed Rendell is the dopiest dumbass in politics. I have no idea how this goober-fuck became Governor of Pennsylvania. It certainly doesn't speak well of Pennsylvanians, and I'm almost sad that Chris Matthews looks like he's gonna re-up at MSNBC, because the Pennsylvanians would have a good chance to prove just how inane they are by putting his dumb ass in the Senate.

MEGAN: Now, let's be fair. Rendell wouldn't even rank in the bottom 10 of dope-y Senators.

JASON: Well, he ranks well among Governors.

MEGAN: He might be number 11, sure, but I don't even think he's stellar enough at being a dumbfuck to rank that high in the Senate.

JASON: He's just such a side-splitting ass, and like Matthews, he's got all these pretensions of knowing what it's like to be working class.

MEGAN: Well, speaking of assholes who like to pretend they're down with the average Joe, Bill Jefferson finally lost re-election in Louisiana. To a Republican community organizer.

JASON: I feel like the Dems in Congress got lucky, there. Now they don't have to make excuses for why they never gave that shitheel Jefferson the mad shun when he was in office.

MEGAN: Nope, now they can focus on not talking about why they won't do anything about Corruption King Charlie Rangel, whose stupefying corruption in office makes Jefferson's bribes seem tame by comparison.

JASON: His legislative director was named one of The Hill's Fifty Most Beautiful People in 2008. They said she had "a mysterious kind of beauty - the kind that unfolds by the minute." I said, "But she works for Louisiana Representative William Jefferson, so hidden in those folds are thousands of dollars in bribes." Yeah, they like, uncover something new and shady about ol' Charlie everyday, don't they? He's become an embarrassment, too.

MEGAN: It's sad, actually, some of his staff were really, really good and they all got completely fucked by his bribe-schemes. Hell, even his colleagues he worked with on African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) saw their accomplishments tarnished by Jefferson's use of the act to gin up money for himself and his relatives.

JASON: Yep. For the 300,000 people applying to put the change in change.gov, I recommend you vet your prospective boss at least as thoroughly as they're vetting you.

MEGAN: Charlie Rangel is beyond embarrassing. You have the chairman of the committee in charge of taxation — including a push to close the tax gap, i.e., reduce cheating — cheating on his fucking taxes. Let alone keeping multi-million dollars in tax breaks afloat for big donors to his library, let alone hitting up every lobbyist in his office for said donations. Let alone using affordable housing units for his offices to avoid having to put his Harlem office in a less ritzy part of Harlem when there's a crisis in affordable housing in New York City.

JASON: I mean, take a walk through his Wikipedia page, and it's a long list of embarrassing offenses. He's probably got one of the safest seats in the goddamn world, though.

MEGAN: Charlie Rangel puts Dollar Bill Jefferson's penny-ante "pay me money and I'll introduce you to African dictators" scheme to shame. But, yeah, he's not going anywhere in his district. And I guarantee the "Ethics" Committee's "investigation" will result in a light tap on the wrist — the kind these very Democrats castigated them for when they did it to Tom DeLay — and they'll hope everyone forgets about it.

JASON: They need to find his fridge full of money.

MEGAN: Bitch, please. Charlie Rangel's probably got it in the floorboards of his house in the Dominican Republic. Too bad you can't ask his wife, since he halted their divorce so she couldn't testify.

JASON: True that. Look, this is why I tell people: send your incumbents home! This is what happens when people never lose their seats, ever. Give them a taste of that undeserved immortality...

MEGAN: Another thing to tell people: do not make Fran Drescher the Senator from New York.

JASON: OY. Whatever the opposite of jizzing in my pants is, I just did it.

MEGAN: Well, then, the thought of George Bush kissing Barbra Streisand can't make it any worse.

JASON: Yep. Basically, my left ball is now off on a merry adventure in my bowels.

MEGAN: Hopefully, it will re-emerge by the time your extremely cute wife gets home from work. Otherwise, please apologize to her from me. I don't try to ruin other women's sex lives.

JASON: Hey, he'll just re-emerge stronger.

MEGAN: Is it weird that I'm having a vision of a Lemmiwinks-like quest for your nut?

JASON: Yes. Yes it is.

MEGAN: Sorry. It's been that kind of morning. I just hope you don't cough it up.

JASON: I'm just going to remember touching Kate Beckinsale last week, and I'll be fine.

• Oprah Winfrey is talking her show on the road to D.C. during the Inauguration. Let the speculation begin about which members of the new Administration will be appearing. [Access Hollywood]
• Congress is going to pass a law to reduce the salary of the Secretary of State to block Republican efforts to keep Hillary Clinton from serving on Constitutional grounds. So much for pay equity in an Obama Administration. [Talking Points Memo]
• Al Franken says he's pulled ahead of Norm Coleman in the Minnesota Senate race. [Politico]

• Bill Richardson didn't win any points with Barack Obama when he showed up at the presser announcing his appointment sans beard. [Washington Post, CNN]
• But could the Commerce Department just be a stepping stone on Bill Richardson's path to his beloved State Department? [Washington Independent]
• Barack Obama told all the ambassadors appointed by Bush to be out by January 20th.There's no word whether the ambassadors to India or Pakistan might be staying on. [Washington Post]
• By the way, the Mumbai terrorists were high as shit on coke and LSD the entire time they were killing people. [Boing Boing]
• Possibly also high as shit was Karl Rove, who told a roomful of New Yorkers that George Bush is totally not the worst President in modern history. [Washington Times]
• Eliot Spitzer will begin penning a finance-and-government column for Slate. It won't talk about financing high-end sex with prostitution while being in government. [New York Observer via Attackerman]
• The anti Prop 8 folks get every actor you've ever seen to act in a musical. [Funny Or Die]

MEGAN: Welcome to another grey, rainy D.C. morning. This did not help me drag my ass out of bed.

LATOYA: Yeah, the bed was strangely warm this morning. Ah well — I'll throw on some T.I. and that will get me started. In the meantime, have you been watching what's going on in Mumbai?

MEGAN: Yeah, what a terrible long weekend.

LATOYA: Understatement. The coverage was horrifying. Not just from a fucking asshole terrorist standpoint. But also from a "how do we cover things that go down in other nations" standpoint? I got emails all weekend from readers (of Racialicious) about the way this attack has been treated.

MEGAN: Well, "how do we cover things that do down in another nation on a holiday weekend" standpoint, I think.

LATOYA: No, this is a bit different. Did you watch any of the TV coverage? Lots of shots of the blood on the floor. Bleeding people being dragged to safety. While normally, if we are covering something that happens in the west, we only shoot the building, and shots of people and their families.

MEGAN: I hardly ever watch TV coverage of anything, honestly, and particularly not network coverage.

LATOYA: Maybe a destroyed item, like a bombed car.

MEGAN: Actually, I have a huge problem with not showing injured people.

LATOYA: We show more respect to the human casualties. Why do you have a problem with it?

MEGAN: Because I think that when we minimize the effects of violence, we minimize it's impact. I criticized the media a lot in the wake of the Bhutto assassination for sanitizing the violence. I don't agree that we shouldn't show white people, but I think we should show all of it. What turned people against Vietnam? Seeing the truth of violence.

LATOYA: Perhaps. And yet... we wrote about this before. Tami contributed a piece called "The Brown and the Dead" which focused on the discrepancy of coverage given.

MEGAN: Violence shouldn't be some pretty, sanitized ballet of bullets in the movie, or some cold, bluish corpse with a well-designed fake wound on CSI. That's just porn, practically. Show it. Make people recoil in horror.

LATOYA: She writes:

According to the Huffington Post, a CNN spokesperson, defending the news outlet’s work in Burma, said “the enormity of the story” merited showing corpses. What are the chances that CNN will show the broken bodies of the 22 people killed in twisters that plowed across the central United States this weekend, y’know so we get “the enormity of the story?” We did not need to see graphic footage of victims to understand the enormity of Oklahoma City or 9/11. I do remember seeing some footage of the dead in Katrina–not as graphic as the Myanmar coverage–but we all know those folks weren’t American anyway, they were “refugees.” (Tongue firmly in cheek, here.)

Now, I am normally for releasing the less sanitized version of historical events. It's one of those reasons people don't know what the fuck a lynching actually was. It's been sanitized. But the glaring discrepancy is odd, to say the least.

MEGAN: I think we did need to see the broken bodies on 9/11. Did you watch the French documentary they aired on CBS a year later? It was the first news coverage to deal honestly with the people throwing themselves out of the windows. No, I agree, I think people should be forced to confront the reality of what violence does to people. I just don't think the way to reduce the discrepancy between showing it abroad and here is best served by reducing the honesty of our coverage abroad.

LATOYA: Maybe. But as it stands currently, news outlets alter their footage as a sign of respect to the deceased — a courtesy that they do not extend to all the victims.

MEGAN: But, for the record, the media sanitized the shit out of the bombing in Pakistan.

LATOYA: For Bhutto, right?

MEGAN: I would put quotes around "respect." I don't think the only way to be respectful of someones death is to pump their body full of chemicals and plaster it with makeup and set it in a coffin.

LATOYA: Not surprising. She was a friend of the West — did you miss the retrospectives?

MEGAN: Gosh, I must have stopped paying attention in between looking at photos of the other people her assassins killed and writing about how the media was sanitizing it for our collective right to not have to look at dead people. Though, to point out, blood on the floor and bleeding, but still live, victims are generally considered fair game, as news coverage of 9/11 and Oklahoma City and, if I recall correctly, the Olympic bombing showed.

LATOYA: There's looking and there's gawking, Megan.

MEGAN: I'm not disagreeing with the thesis, but I want it all. I want people to see what we really do to one another. I want to de-mystify, and de-romanticize violence. Let people gawk! Make them look! This is what I think was so effective about war coverage in Vietnam — it was the violence wrought upon us and by us that made people think, wow, maybe war isn't a good thing. Maybe Communism isn't the worst thing in the world, maybe this is.

LATOYA: Perhaps. There's some "not encouraging serial killers" logic for that that I remember from Forensics class, but I'd rather head back into the land of the living.

MEGAN: Yeah, if we're going to talk foreign stuff, we should probably mention that Hillary's nomination goes live at 10:40 this morning. And although the New York Daily News is reporting she turned down the chair of the Appropriations Committee for it, there is no way on God's green earth that she was offered the Chair of the committee. She was probably offered a chair on the committee, that I can see, but she's not going to get hosed because of seniority issues on the HELP Committee and then get chair of Approps.

LATOYA: True, true. To be honest, I'm still kind of wondering what drew her to that post.

MEGAN: Maybe it's true that when the President asks you can't turn it down? Although, I sort of assume it's about the feeling that she could make a real difference in the world there, as opposed to waiting another 15 years for people to die in the Senate to get the opportunity.

LATOYA: But there are a lot of positions where one can make a difference. Why Secretary of State?

MEGAN: And possibly a sense that, given its history, by the time she has enough seniority to make a difference, the balance of power might have swung back to Republicans. It's a mindset most partisan politicians don't have. They always think they'll be in power forever (see: the 20 House Republican retirements this cycle).

LATOYA: Hmm...

MEGAN: Well, Secretary of State was what was offered. It's high up in the line of succession. It's got the most autonomy of any of the agencies, and the most ability to set policy. It's the only agency that requires approval of its actions, rather than legislation to push an agenda in the first place.

LATOYA: I also wonder what she and Condi will talk about in the debriefing.

MEGAN: Plus, if you look at the things she talked about in terms of her pre-Senate political achievements, what did she always mention? Her speech to the UN women's conference in China. She's really obviously (and rightly) proud of that. I think that's sort of telling.

LATOYA: Hmm — this will be an interesting cabinet to watch, to say the least.

MEGAN: Totally. Condi might have gotten Glamour's Woman of the Year award this year for her work at State on women's issues, but I have a feeling that Hillary might trump those achievements.

LATOYA: I can see the headlines now: "Hillary vs. Taliban — It's Personal, bitches!"

MEGAN: Oh, God. Well, if we want to talk inflammatory headlines, want to talk about how black women, pissed that they aren't married, helped pass Prop 8 in California?

Marriage can be a sore subject for black women in general. According to 2007 Census Bureau data, black women are the least likely of all women to be married and the most likely to be divorced. Women who can’t find a man to marry might not be thrilled about the idea of men marrying each other.

LATOYA: Hahahahahaha. I was just going to mention that. Yup, we are all just a bunch of lonely haters.

MEGAN: As an unmarried woman, although not black, I just want to say: I don't want to marry a gay man, thanks.

LATOYA: Teh gayz took all teh menz, so we took our revenge at the ballot box.

MEGAN: What, your mom didn't tell you to get a man you need to have a penis? Even a fake one? My mom got me one for my Sweet Sixteen so I could get me a husband.

LATOYA: Though, I must admit — after all the prop 8 madness, I was more amused than angered at his conclusions.

First, comparing the struggles of legalizing interracial marriage with those to legalize gay marriage is a bad idea. Many black women do not seem to be big fans of interracial marriage either. They’re the least likely of all groups to intermarry, and many don’t look kindly on the black men who intermarry at nearly three times the rate that they do, according to a 2005 study of black intermarriage rates in the Wisconsin Law Review. Wrong reference. Don’t even go there.

Don't even go there? Did homeboy add a two snap in the circle on the end of that?

MEGAN: I believe he did, along with the head roll.

LATOYA: Guuuuuuuuurl....

MEGAN: Also, I love how the subtext of that is "black women are racist" in addition to homophobic.

LATOYA: I told you we're just a bunch of hating harpies. Weren't you watching those two specials on blackness? Now, I can only remember the What About Our Daughters' site take on the two shows. They retitled them "Black Women, it sucks to be you" and "Black women, it doesn't suck to be you, it just feels like it." I'm personally hating the race based hand wringing over this one.

MEGAN: Well, if they had been titled that, viewership probably would have been higher.

LATOYA: Ha — true! But back to prop 8 — I just love how people were so quick to fall back on stereotypes to justify an end. It becomes one of those moments when you hear shit like "black women are against homosexual marriage" and I have to ask "and which black women are you talking to?"

MEGAN: What, black women aren't a monolithic entity?

LATOYA: Oh right, I forgot. There's just a whole lot of us "exceptions" who are counted separately. Bullshit.

MEGAN: You are not allowed to be different people for difference reasons! It's too complex!

LATOYA: The worst part of all this is that legitimate tactics, organizing, and information sharing is getting obscured by all the sensationalist shit. Like this little tidbit:

More specifically, blacks overwhelmingly say that homosexuality isn’t morally acceptable. So many black men hide their sexual orientations and engage in risky behavior. This has resulted in large part in black women’s becoming the fastest-growing group of people with H.I.V. In a 2003 study of H.I.V.-infected people, 34 percent of infected black men said they had sex with both men and women, while only 6 percent of infected black women thought their partners were bisexual. Tragic. (In contrast, only 13 percent of the white men in the study said they had sex with both men and women, while 14 percent of the white women said that they knew their partners were bisexual.)

MEGAN: White bisexual men lie about it, too. Not that I know this from personal experience or anything.

LATOYA: Now, an argument could be made that homosexuality is less accepted in minority communities for various reasons — the specter of masculinity, religious affinity, etc.

MEGAN: The specter of being a multiple-minority.

LATOYA: That too. And if that is the case, we need to be supporting the people within our own communities who deal with these issues and help them to spread their message. Because that's where these battles are ultimately fought — person to person.

MEGAN: I think everyone knows that the LGBT community's outreach — particularly on Prop 8 — to the African-American community was lacking in general.

LATOYA: That it was. They also didn't humanize their cause.

MEGAN: Where was Jesse Jackson? Where were the televised confabs?

LATOYA: I remember seeing ads featuring a straight couple to drive home the point about gay marriage.

MEGAN: The homophobes' ads were really well done and devastating.

LATOYA: They couldn't get Wanda Sykes? I loved Wanda's message. I didn't see any of the protect marriage stuff, but I did see Wanda's speech, which was awesome.

MEGAN: Totally. I mean, if you're targeting the message, target it. I'd bet Whoopi would have done one, too. Get every black icon to do one.

LATOYA: I do hear the "why do gays have to flaunt their lifestyle" b.s. And Wanda was like "hell, I was just living my life. Then this shit happened."

MEGAN: Because they're having anal in the streets now? Bitch, please. They're not "flaunting their lifestyle" any more than any other couples who hold hands and shit.

LATOYA: I know. How dare you act like heteros with your damn hand holding and affection?

MEGAN: Why must you make me think of your penis! By holding hands with another man, all I can think about is your strong, throbbing cock penetrating his quivering asshole! You pervert! Stop holding hands!

LATOYA: Wasn't that Mary J. Blige who said homophobia was the dumbest shit ever?

MEGAN: It's only dumb if you are confident in your own sexuality.

LATOYA: I remember reading an interview where she was like "What difference does it make to you what another man is doing? It's like you're unsure of yourself — and if you're unsure about that, you're unsure about a lot of things in your life." Well, I guess it's like we were talking about before, with sanitizing history. Rights are hard won.

MEGAN: If you don't see it, it doesn't exist?

LATOYA: And there are always going to be idiots on the wrong side of history.

MEGAN: Of every color.

LATOYA: Word.