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

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

• Barry called his grandma a "typical white person" on WIP, a highly erudite Philadelphia AM radio station, and now typical white people everywhere are left to ponder this. [Wonkette]
  
• Scooter Libby was disbarred. it probably could have happened to a nicer guy, but not one who had written so explicitly about dog fucking! [Wash Post]
  
• "You're acting like it's our fault, and it's not." That's JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to Bear Stearns shareholders. Such a mensch. [NY Mag]
  
• Tibet's whole "independence" idea is catching on with Taiwan just in time to affect their elections. (Wait a second, if Taiwan has its own elections, does it really need independence?) Sigh. [NYT]
  
• A radio interviewer asked Dick Cheney about his dead-bottoming in opinion polls, the squandering of a trillion dollars and the loss of 600,000 or so lives, and Dick Cheney was all like, "So?" No SRSLY. [Wash Post]

• New word alert! "Seduceries." As in, the "Air Jordan of seduceries." [NYT]
• Ugh, Barry and Hillary, if it's not some shit that happened five years ago, it's shit that happened fifteen years ago, and frankly, we are sick. Of this shit. [MSNBC]
• Jennifer Lopez never wore that eighteen-tier Vera Wang gown she ordered to marry Ben Affleck but I'm sure it will go into a museum one day because she is such a very important historical figure. [US Weekly]
• Steve-O blames his alcoholism on the fact that his parents put liquor on his pacifier when he cried on planes as a baby. And so do I. [Us Magazine]
• You know? I am all for regulating the shit out of Wall Street. But if John McCain can't keep Iran and Al Qaeda straight and that is his fucking area of expertise I can't say I'm exactly confident in the ability of career legislators to grasp this shit, and creating a whole new regulatory body when the SEC is underfunded as it is seems a little silly. But hey, whatever, go for it Barney Frank. [Politico]
• No do-over in Michigan. [NYT]

• Wyoming caucus tomorrow! Obama is expected to win. Because it's the home state of his distant cousin Dick Cheney? Nah, but I thought I'd use this bizarre picture anyway. [AP, Rolling Stone]
  
• I couldn't exactly run another Samantha Power pic. But here she is in the news again, talking about how that whole sixteen month plan is unrealistic and stupid or something that will no doubt be spun 47.5 different ways. [Politico]
  
• Employers cut more jobs in February than they have in five years. What sector was hit the hardest? Ummmmm, all of them! [Yahoo!]
  
• Ooooh, look, a fun ranking of corporate America's fifty biggest single paydays! [Vanity Fair]
  
• Speaking of! Virginia Rep. Tom Davis valiantly came to their recipients' defense today in Congress, because cross-examining the warmhearted captains of industry behind the mortgage crisis is really just like sacrificing virgins. [Wonkette]
  
• Speaking semi- also of! Obama campaign manager David Plouffe wants to see Clinton's tax returns, suggests she try out the photocopying services at Kinko's. [Wash Post]
  
• Marion Jones went to jail. [People]
  
• Michigan Senator Carl Levin thinks everyone should just forget the fuck about his disenfranchised voters already. [CNN]

• OMG Chinese army-trained hackers NO ONE IS SAFE. [CNN]
• Italian adulteresses are now officially allowed to lie about their affairs to protect their reputations. No word on adulterers, but it's apparently a refreshing change of pace for the Court of Cassation, which once issued that a woman could not be raped by definition if she was wearing tight jeans, since the jeans could only be removed with her consent. . [BBC]
• All that time it was the Clinton campaign that wanted to reassure the Canadians about NAFTA, not the Obama campaign! What a silly mix-up. [MSNBC]
• Hey! Remember that time you were almost a Democrat, John McCain. No, not that time, the time when Kerry wanted you for a running mate...Well alright then! [Real Clear Politics]
• "Pillow talk??? Girl, I need to have someone come and clean up all the feathers from our pillow fights!" An excerpt from Dyson v. Dyson, wherein a Clinton supporter marries an Obama supporter. [The Root]
• Belarus is kicking out our ambassador. I know, right? I didn't know that we'd imposed economic sanctions on Belarus, charging that the national gas company is tacitly controlled by its increasingly brutal dictator Alexander Lukashenko either. But like, it sounds pretty plausible, huh? [Wash Post]

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

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

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

Poseur/artiste Damien Hirst is not only attending the "hotly-anticipated" Prada party during New York Fashion Week, he's designing the giant skull-shaped mirror that will be enhancing the store's decor the night of the party as well. [WWD, 2nd item]

• Somewhere there is a decree that Stella McCartney is infallible regarding the rights of animals and the environment and if you commit the heresy of questioning this she will bite. [Vogue UK]
  
• "The collection is many women. She is strong, hard working, sincere, purposeful, intelligent, easygoing, chic, professional, edgy, happy, a mother, a friend, a single woman, a hippie spirit," Rachel Roy on the woman who represents her upcoming Spring/Summer 2008 collection. In other words, anyone with two breasts and a credit card. [The Fashion Informer]

• Kelly Klein is having a baby, something that never happened while the sometime-photographer was married to her now-ex, Calvin Klein. [Page Six]
• "I wanted something memorable and sweet. It started with a drawing of a deer. I changed the "deer" to "dear." You know, something that's dear to you," says Amanda Bynes, on the name of her Steve & Barry's clothing line. Wow, Amanda. We had no idea until you told us that that's what "dear" means. [Houston Chronicle]
• Project Runway! At last! November 14 we will be reunited with Heidi, Tim, Nina, and Michael. [FabSugar]
• OMG. Vintage Reebok. Revived. Go look. Now. [FabSugar] Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
• The CEO of Rock & Republic has been charged with sexual harassment by a former employee. And by "sexual harassment" we mean she has accused him of attempted rape. Just putting that out there. [TMZ]