• Cudmudgeonly uncle-anchor Jack Cafferty has disappointed millions of women everywhere by saying, "Viagra is used to treat a medical condition, erectile dysfunction. Birth control is a lifestyle choice," when discussing John McCain's little birth control gaffe. Jack, sweetie, birth control pills do treat medical conditions and there's a good economic argument (pregnancy is expensive) for covering them. Erectile dysfunction, however, is God's way of telling you to keep it in your pants, old man. [Crooks & Liars]
• John McCain has proved a disappointment to the Secret Service by letting slip details of Barack Obama's highly secret-for-his-own-safety trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. Man, he really will do anything to keep playing his commercial about how Obama's never been. [Talking Points Memo, The Atlantic]

• By the way, McCain also doesn't know if Obama is a Socialist or not. I don't know that John McCain doesn't drink Cindy's drug-filled urine as a sedative, either. What don't you know? [HuffPo]
• The full list of Starbucks closures is now available. Caffeinated Washingtonians rejoice: Only one in D.C.! [HuffPo]
• Harold Ford got booed at Netroots Nation because he used to work at Fox News, but not because he used to date Julia Allison. [HuffPo]
• The German government has decided to let Obama speak — at the Victory Column, not the Brandenburg Gate because the Bushies kinda asked them not to. Wankers. [HuffPo]
• Scott Peterson has a blog. I think we can finally call this blogging trend over; no one's ever going to believe we're normal people now. [CNN]
• Greta Van Susteren, like, totally swears that she knows someone who knows someone whose anti-Obama copy was watered down at CNN, not that it ever happened to her and she's totally got journalistic freedom (if not freedom from the plastic surgery requirement) at Fox News and is she up for a new contract soon or something? [Fishbowl NY]

• In an interview on Glamocracy (also known as "the other place I blog") with Glamour's Cindi Leive, Barack Obama said that he's infuriated by right-wing attacks on his wife. Maybe he and Bill will actually have something to talk about next time they talk. [Glamocracy]
• The Nation has a new sex columnist, JoAnn Wypikewski. JoAnn thinks that there are "legions of little girls jumping out of their panties" for Obama, which manages to be stupid, demeaning, creepy and sexist all at the same time! "Ugh" is right. [The Nation, Salon]
• Oh, and conservative talk show host Michael Savage thinks that autistic children are just "[brats] who [haven't] been told to cut the act." Why the fuck do people listen to this asshole again? [Media Matters]

• But the FDA says it's cool to eat tomatoes now, just not peppers. Fools, the last thing Americans need to be told by the government is to eat fewer fresh veggies. Right hand, left hand? [CNN]
• And the first Obamite to sell out is coming to town soon. Dan Shomon masterminded Obama's 2004 Senate campaign and is now selling his connections to Obama in Washington. He won't be the last, that's for sure. In Washington, Democrats sell out just as quick as Republicans. [Politico]
• China has issued new regulations by which artists will be allowed to perform there, following Bjork's Tibet shout-out. Guess a good Olympic half-time show is totally out. [NY Times]
• In good news, though, Kay Ryan is set to be this country's 17th poet laureate on Thursday. [NY Times]

• Iran photoshopped an extra missile in this picture of that "sabre rattling" crap we wrote about last night. Leave it to our brother site Gizmodo to mentally "prepare" us for this profoundly depressing evidence of propaganda. [NYT]
• Speaking of, I had totally forgotten I made up the whole "Photoshop of Horrors" pun until this awesomeness. [Vanity Fair]
• Does John McCain use Viagra? There are some bad jokes to be made, like about the image I just had of him getting PTSD the one time he switched to Cialis, but the truth are there are many different ways you can address these delicate issues and one of them, according to my aunt Bridget, is watermelon juice. [CNN]
• According to some interview with some person from the Hills on some Sirius channel Heidi Montag is going to record a Christian album. I'm sure Jesus is so flattered. [E!]

• This diplomat used his awesome visa awarding powers to get sex, although he claims he didn't, and anyway, his defense is this indefensibly cultural relativist point of view that is actually pretty common when you get out of this country, and I think I'll blog about it tomorrow, but if you live somewhere (like say Southeast Asia) that a lot of desperate youngs have sex with older (especially expat) men and everyone is A-Ok with that, you know how to reach me. [USA Today]
• Necrophilia was just outlawed in Wisconsin. This came as a surprise to me, since necrophilia was always against the law at the phone sex call center I worked at this one time, even though phone sex was duh a fantasy especially since duh DUH you can't have phone sex with dead people. To be honest, I don't know who's really that into necrophilia, it wasn't like foot licking or chair tying or sodomizing your teenage daughter's boyfriend on the stairwell or any of the other fantasies I got a lot, but maybe the two state Supreme Court justices who voted against the ban know something those guys didn't. [Chicago Tribune]

• Want to hear Jesse Jackson say something embarrassing and regrettable about cutting Obama's nuts out that is probably even more regrettable considering the supposed context is some shit about how Barack Obama needs to stop focusing so much on taking black men to task for being bad role models? Then turn on O'Reilly at 8! Yeah, I'm choosing beer in this case. [Drudge]
• Test missile launches always seem like the ten million dollar equivalent of showing up at your ex-boyfriend's party with some hot dude you blow at around midnight in the corner, in full view of at least three of his closest friends. Which is to say, they're just sort of inexplicably lame to me but it's the sort of behavior that shows you know exactly how to fuck with dudes. [WSJ]
• Sure you can get mad at Obama for supporting this rotten warrantless wiretapping retroactive immunity crap, but do you really think "swing voters" would buy that he doesn't support the U.S. Constitution solely on grounds that he's an Allah-worshiping terrorist? [Salon]
• Handy "analogy for the whole fucking economy" of the day #1: My grandfather's people are about to start getting paid in Euros. [WSJ]

• Handy " " " #2: High-flying super expansionary company employing 17,000 mostly unskilled uneducated Americans and some untold number of Chinese sweatshop workers goes down the tubes because it never really made money in the first place, and as it turns out its actual "earnings" came mostly from the same sweet loans and real estate kickbacks that have sent the rest of the system into disarray, but at the end of the day some rich Penn guys and Sarah Jessica Parker will get paid. [WSJ]
• Oh yeah so the market fell today, led by companies involved in those mortgage thingys, putting the S&P 500 index officially in the same "bear" category as the Dow. [WSJ]
• Angela Merkel does not have a crush on Obama, but her foreign minister does, which I guess means this whole awesome saga is playing out in Germany about some speech he wants to give before the Bradenburg Gate. [Breitbart]
• A depressing way to remind oneself that Istanbul is not actually the capital of Turkey. [NYT]

• Wait, Lara Logan is pregnant, too? Anyway, Howard Kurtz de-sluttifies her today in a clinically gossipy story that lays bare the timetable by which she was fucking her Michael Ware versus her soon-to-be-ex-husband versus the military contractor, who is the father, and also married, but divorcing now in a dramatic trial that sounds like such a great time. Oh, also, did you know she had an ectopic pregnancy once? No? Now you do. Hey, remember what Lara said about the news in this country making her want to kill herself? [Wash Post]
• So Dick…like, I get that it's super fun for you to watch liberals foam at the mouth over the latest audaciously undemocratic little abuse of power you got your staff to pull, and I also get that you do it because you can, but like, hasn't the joke gotten sorta old? [WSJ]
• Ben Bernanke gave a speech about how he needs more power and let me tell you everyone is so happy with the job he's done so far that… [WSJ]

• So China told Sarkozy not to meet with the Dalai Lama and something about missiles and gas futures are off and then in Guyana there was this awesome story about a first-class Delta passenger who got so sick of sitting on the tarmac he opened the exit door and slid down the emergency slide but there is NO PICTURE and anyway, tell you what: I'm kind of distracted today!

• There's probably some economic metaphor to be had in a story about 13 people being trampled by bulls in Pamplona, but then again it might be a cautionary tale about what the tourism industry can convince you is "fun." [Washington Post]
• Speaking of a snow job, guess who is the latest politician calling for a withdrawal timetable in Iraq sooner rather than later? Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, that's who. No worries, Bush and McCain will find other reasons not to withdraw yet. [Washington Post]
• Jim Webb, though, is totally withdrawing from VP consideration, though. [HuffPo]

• In possibly the smartest logistical decision made to date, Barack Obama will accept the nomination at Invesco Field, which seats 75,000 people instead of the 20,000 they can cram into the Pepsi Center where the rest of the convention is being held. Here's to the speech being slightly less of a clusterfuck than every other acceptance speech in the history of televised party conventions. [NY Times]
• Oh, and he's kind of kicking ass at the polls right now, so maybe it won't even be his last? [CQ Politics]
• And, if we're lucky, the good corrupt politicians of Alaska might get their asses kicked both by exorbitant legal bills and at the polls this year. I'll take either one, actually, since they're using donations from lobbyists (mostly oil company types, one assumes) to pay them. In the immortal words of Nelson: Ha-ha. [HuffPo]

• Rush Limbaugh got the most gigantic deal in the history of practically all media, well, except for Howard Stern, but way bigger than Madonna, so it's a good thing he tips well. All this time I had no idea that his radio show went on the air at exactly 12:06 p.m. His fleet of houses and cars are something out of Cribs; Ira Glass and Al Sharpton and sundry other liberals who have actually listened to his show admire his mind and his wit but when he first came to New York he was shunned for his conservatism and the painful memories of that experience have lingered and blackened into dogmatic fact-avoidance, and you can read all that and more in this Times Magazine preview so you don't have to spoil your Sunday thinking about him and his twenty million listeners fucking up the election somehow. (Unrelated: What is it about painkiller addiction that's never quite compelling enough for reporters to ask dark revelatory questions? And yes I'm talking to you, everyone who's ever profiled Cindy McCain.) [NYT]

• The market is "officially" a bear, having fallen 20% from its peak last fall. I can't believe anyone last fall thought it was a good time to have a record-high Dow Jones Industrial Index, but…I guess that's why they got out. [WSJ]
• Hitchens wonders if his waterboarders might have been able to confess being a hermaphrodite. [Vanity Fair]
• If the fact that the Bush of all people might be on the verge of shutting down Guantanamo is any indication…[ABC News]
• The Colombian military rescued fifteen hostages, including the idealistic French-Colombian politician and six year confinement veteran Ingrid Betancourt. (Here's the Betancourt primer.) [BBC]
• John McCain got into a physical confrontation with a Sandinista that scared Thad Cochran back in January but Thad is no longer scared now that McCain is old and frail…[Sun Herald]
• And spineless…[Crooks and Liars]

• Okay, I know you could say this of a lot of places but I think China has officially entered that realm where the FEAR that they somehow "jinxed" the Olympics by sending in those blue tracksuit guys is actually causing weird shit to happen. [IHT]
• Obama gave a speech about how despite the fact that he has never spent any time at torture camp, he loves America. This is just so fundamentally weird to me. I mean, first of all, I know some genuinely unpatriotic people, and most of them are not even motivated enough to move to Canada or Cuba or whatever they babble about and they are definitely not motivated enough to run for president, and second of all, when they do they are usually such haters they immediately zero in on something they hate even worse about the rest of the world. [Washington Post]
• That said if Mitt Romney becomes vice president I am fucking moving to Scandinavia. [Politico]
• You know how much it sucks when you think of a punchline but it can't find a joke? Well, Dodai, the conservabloggers have officially found a home for "I wish I could force quit you!" [The Carpetbagger Report]
• The Central Bank of Central Banks agrees: the global economy is headed for total armageddon! And Ben Bernanke's pumping up of the money supply has, ahem, not helped matters. [WSJ]

• And if it gets so bad you're forced to buy you winter sweaters at Wal-Mart, take heart in the idea that the residents of Sweater City could use the twenty three cents. [WSJ]
• Obama strongly condemned the "General Betray Us" slur. A little late but uh okay. I never really thought it was that apt a moniker coming from the MoveOn people anyway. I mean, it's not like David Petraeus was handpicked by Amnesty International to keep the peace in Iraq, but whatever. [The Hill]
• The pharmaceutical industry is bitching and moaning about the lack of trust in its relationship with the FDA ever since the Vioxx affair, but maybe the pharmaceutical industry needs to think about spicing things up and giving something a little different from the same-old same-old cholesterol/hypertension/obesity drugs, you know? [WSJ]
• The new World Trade Center building is not going to be finished by September 11, 2011, apparently because no one is actually in charge of the thing, which probably comes as a relief to banks who said they wanted to relocate there but can't really afford the bills right now. [WSJ]
• Nuclear power would actually be a good idea if not for the fact that it can be so destructive. But really, the Burmese would probably tell you the same thing about the wind, right? And we'll all be fucked when the sun powering all our solar panels decides to explode so really, it's probably six in one, half dozen in the other as the saying goes. [WSJ]
• Scenes from a focus group: "I have two sons in college and one who's a senior in high school. I can plod along and make it on my own, but I really don't see it for them. I mean, if college is costing $50,000 a year and all of the things that go along with that, I don't see them being even as successful as I was, and I'm not even as successful as my father was. . . . I'm a single mom taking care of three kids. . . . I'm thinking we do need change. I'm not certain that either one of the candidates is going to bring the changes that we need, but we certainly need change to make it better for them."
• "I am registered as a Republican and considered myself as a Republican up until this president. Now I'm like, I don't know what I am. . . . I think that for most of my life my decisions have been made based on morals and family values and that whole belief system that I've had instilled in me since birth. And now all of a sudden our country is like turned upside down with all these economic issues that I haven't encountered in my lifetime and it's really making me second-guess, you know, voting for those ideals instead of voting for other issues that need to be dealt with." Wash Post]

Can't really handle the News Roundup tonight. Will Leitch of Deadspin is having some party and I was on some panel last night and I've gotta go offshore drill out my pores but if you're in the mood try not to launch any projectile snot over the sponsors of this Defense of Marriage act and debate whether Ben Bernanke catapulted the economy into inflation shock and watch Amy Winehouse serenade Nelson Mandela and watch this classic Queen Latifah video in honor of its authenticity relative to Barack Obama and Hillary's hugging it out in Unity, New Hamphire today. Oh and remember not to go on any extreme diets this weekend, they turn people into cruel bitches.

• Maria Sharapova was beaten by some complete and total nobody 154th-ranked player, who said it was easy, not because she's named "Alla" but because, "Well, I don't like her outfit. Can I put it this way? It was one of the motivations to beat her." I feel that way all the time about pretty much everyone in this city, except for the "motivation" part. [IHT]
• The Dow had a crap day and has lost more than 14% this year so far. [WSJ]
• The debates will be sit-down so John McCain doesn't look like the tiny old man he is. [McClatchy]
• I'm just going shed my propagandist and tell you that Obama is annoying myself right now, what with the talking about how he "bit his tongue" during the primary but no elucidation of what bad words he might have called her, or saying John McCain would roll back every gain women have made in 50 years which is just partisan inanity, or this DC gun ban thing where he praises Scalia for recognizing that the 2nd Amendment isn't absolute. [The Hill]

• Ugh. [Wash Post]
• Oh look guys, a sneak preview on the Friday animal picture orgy. [KG]
• And now I have to run. Sorry this is so abbreviated and shitty. Next time.

• The Grandmaster Flash memoir is out, and I know a big plot point is how he beat cocaine, but fuck if the guy doesn't sound as endearingly hyperactive as he did rapping about stagflation three decades ago or whatever. Apparently he's a hero in Burma? [Newsweek]
• All this time I've been calling Barack Obama a Muslim and it turns out he's actually a Hindu who worships some golden monkey god? [Times of India]
• Senator Chris Dodd moved his entire family to Iowa all to win one percent of the vote and I am not happy to report his powerful speech in opposition to retroactively granting big telecom firms the right to spy on people will no doubt prove equally in vain. [Wash Post]
• The Supreme Court decided to let Exxon off the hook on some of these pumped up oil spill fines. I mean, we can't very well expect those guys to scrounge up the money to find new sources of oil if we force them to pay putative damages for every little thing they do wrong, can we? You decide. [NYT]

• Also in the Supreme Court child rapists won a victory of sorts, and Barack Obama apparently does not approve. [Wash Post]
• Countrywide Financial was sort of the poster bank for the whole "Rent to own, No credit no problem" mortgage concept that is now costing taxpayers $300 billion or so, so it makes total sense that billionaire CEO Angelo Mozilo's tears would garner a standing ovation at the latest shareholders meeting. Wait no, actually it doesn't. [LA Times]
• I gotta say, I totally agree with this so far and it's kind of a disappointment. [Wash Post]
• Scoff all you want about how a grown man should be capable of distinguishing between a teacher dressed up like a Ninja for a costume party and the genuine Ninja article, but in this post-Virginia Tech era can schools ever really be too cautious? [Phillyburbs]

• Some anonymous collector just bought this Monet for $80.4 million from the kids of some famous collectors from Columbus, Indiana. No really, I thought it was a mistake too, but there really is a Columbus, Indiana, and before they died the couple who amassed this insane art collection were like the hipster royal family there. [NYT]
• A Druze border policeman killed himself in Israel while Sarkozy was watching and the family is asking that his name not be released, but like, I kind of think it's a little late for that. [Haaretz]
• I'm not saying we should adopt all Afghanistan's policies but $100 million just from taxing shit most countries pay hundreds of billions criminalizing sounds pretty tempting…[BBC
• Obama is polling creepily well right now, which makes me nervous, but can you blame the voters when McCain is out there straight-talking about how his offshore drilling ideas are kind of cheap psychological tricks? [MSNBC]

• Okay, if you haven't figured it out yet, Anne Hathaway's boyfriend Rafaello Follieri hired priests, bought robes, fabricated "engineering plans" and bribed low-level Vatican tourism officials — along with some sort of Italian journalist — to make people think he was the chief financial officer of the Vatican, endowed with the unique privilege of selling off Catholic Church properties all over the world, only all of that was a complete load of shit and he knew essentially no one, and the fraud is kind of awe-inspiringly brazen, and thankfully New York decided to digest its juicy bits. [NY Mag]
• You know what, Nancy Pelosi? Amen. [Chicago Sun-Times]
• If all the world's millionaires lived in a single city it would have almost two million more people than New York and no fucking clue where to get its nails done. [Yahoo]
• "I don't go out as much as I used to. Instead of going to a bar I'll stay home and get a six-pack."A story on the dismal consumer sentiment numbers out today hits home to the blogger drinking a $3 22 ounce Sierra Nevada. [WSJ]
• Florida is trying to cut down on carbs. [Wash Post
  
  

• OMG remember Efraim Diveroli, the 22-year-old Andy Samberg lookalike from Miami with the $300 million defense contract to sell ancient Chinese ammunition to the Afghan insurgency via Albania? Apparently the US Ambassador was involved in covering up the scam, probably because Efraim was also Albania's leading supply of whores. [NYT]
• And speaking of…people we haven't thought about in a few months, Ashley Alexandra Dupre updated her MySpace! [People]
• 92% of Americans believe in God or something Godlike that doesn't sound quite as lame. But there are ways to combat this! 10% of people raised without religion describe themselves as atheists, and that likelihood goes even higher if you raise your kids Jewish. [LA Times]
• Rich people are actually less happy because they spend so much time doing the unpleasant things required to become rich, such as laying people off and outsourcing business functions to Bangladesh and actually like "working." [Washington Post]

• It's one thing to hope for another terror attack when you're among friends but when you're a McCain adviser talking to a reporter from a major national magazine you're going to get some shit. [TIME]
• That discount retail chain that brought the world the Sarah Jessica Parker clothing line is badly needs $30 million quick, I know you feel soooo bad for them. [WSJ]
• Why I love this country: when a candidate breaks a promise that was a centerpiece of his early base of support because, after all, all the late-adopters to the cause wouldn't be giving him so much money if they expected him to give it back, we call that bad for the "brand." [ABC News]
• The Economist discusses plans for a 100% Ron Paul supporter-occupied residential community in a story that invited me to wonder what it would be like if there was a 100% Jezebel commenter-occupied compound. Would you guys have a sex shrine like the Mormons? Would SinisterRouge be the first evicted? Would I, like Ron Paul, be afraid to visit? [Economist]
• America might try to open an "interest center" — sort of like an Embassy popup store, or an Embassy Lite — in Tehran, which I think is a good idea as long as they still get to sell alcohol. [Wash Post]
• Morgan Tsvangirai is hiding out at the Dutch Embassy and everyone else involved on the anti-Mugabe side of Zimbabwe's little flirtation with "democracy" got arrested so I guess that's the end of that. [Washington Post]

• Does someone have $38,001 they can loan me? Because film producer Barbara Broccoli paid $38,000 to charity to kiss Daniel Craig and, um, hell yeah. [AP]
• Speaking of bad loans, hundreds of people have been arrested for making them, including 2 Bear Sterns guys. The economic damage, well, no one knows how to fix that. [Washington Post]
• As previously mentioned, Barack Obama is foregoing federal campaign funding because he doesn't need your stinkin' money. Well, I mean, he needs your money, he just doesn't want the government to be the go-between. Who's small government now (that it benefits him)? [NY Times]
• Actually, for the record, one of the guys who wrote the law thinks it's a smart decision because Obama really, actually doesn't need the money. [HuffPo]

• The French Muslim non-virgin whose wants the annulment her husband wants because she isn't one is probably not going to get it because of the feminist uproar. One step for feminists, I guess, right in the midst of her pain. [BBC]
• Speaking of steps, Congress has come up with a system to give retroactive immunity to phone companies that illegally tapped your phones at the behest of the Administration without looking like they're giving retroactive immunity to phone companies that illegally tapped your phones at the behest of the Administration. And you thought politicians weren't creative. [Washington Post]
• And, in case you thought your job sucked, it turns out that when you work for Congressman Don Young, you also work for his wife and she's crazy. Also,
  If you’re being chased by armed police man [sic], don’t try to escape into a metro station," is part of their intern advice package. It's good advice. [The Hill]

• Meet Bob Barr! He's running for President, wants John McCain's voters and is going to try really hard to get them in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana and West Virginia. Bob, can I also please recommend Ohio, Virginia, Georgia and Colorado? [Washington Post]
• Bush jumped on the "drill on our coastline to lower gas prices" bandwagon today now that his brother is no longer the Governor of Florida, despite the fact that there are hardly any ships to do it. I'll bet we could buy some from the Saudis or the Chinese or something. On credit. [Washington Post, NY Times]
• Mike Huckabee is trying to warn Republicans that demonizing Obama is gonna backfire. Luckily, they all stopped listening to him months ago, before they demonized Obama and lost those Congressional races. [Bloomberg]

• Three men were finally charged in the 2006 assassination of Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya. None of them will ever be tied to the people that ordered it, in all likelihood. [Washington Post]
• Tim Russert's funeral was today. It was sad. [NY Times]
• Torture apologist Doug Feith is a fraidy-cat, doesn't want to sit in a big room with people who might not like him, [ThinkProgress]
• That guy who swears that he blew Obama gave a press conference today, let out the crazy. His lawyer claims to need to wear skirts because of his enormous cock. [HuffPo]

• Not to in any way indicate that we have anything less than the utmost horror and offense for torture, but Lt. Col. Diane Beaver who once urged our armed forces to conduct more brutal interrogations at Gitmo, testified today before the Senate Armed Services Committee about her role in torturing various people. Even when the jokes aren't appropriate, we still have to make them. [Washington Independent]
• Really, it was the fault of this video, which you should not listen to at your office without earphones, that explores in great depth why the news media didn't cover the "John McCain called his wife a cunt" story. [Erica Saves the Day, Glamocracy]
• Also, studies show you're drinking more than you think you're drinking, so tip your bartender well! [LA Times]
• Oh, what you wanted real news? Fine. Check in with me after the jump.

• John McCain and George W Bush have more in common than just their Iraq, tax and environmental policies. They also both got ahead in life because they had powerful daddies. [NY Times, HuffPo]
• Obama says that Osama bin Laden is free because of the Republicans' focus on Iraq. This will likely be really unpopular among people that still believe that Saddam had WMDs and the Iraq War was necessary to stop him from nuking us.[HuffPo]
• Kansas anti-abortion protesters have decided that if they can't win hearts, minds or good legal cases, they'll just use a century-old law to harass an abortion provider. [NY Times]
• Their brothers- and sisters-in-ideological-fundie-arms are busy trying to get people not to enforce other laws though. Mostly the ones that require that California marry gay people. Assholes. [iReport]
• But there is some good stuff in the world and this country today, like the International Violence Against Women Act that Betty Makoni came here from Zimbabwe to lobby for. See? Not all lobbying is bad, people. [Washington Post]

• For those of you who don't recognize the people Obama is embracing, that's Debbie Dingell to the left and Senator Carl Levin to the right. They were two of the four Michiganders who led the fight to get Michigan's full delegate seated at the convention. [Kalamazoo Gazette]
• Which is a roundabout way of illustrating that Democrats are all kissing and making up and coming to the fold and John McCain may be feeling lonely without the ladies he was expecting to come over. [LA Times]
• Except for with Joe Lieberman, he's really pissing the Dems off. He might speak at the Republican convention, by the way, a la Zell Miller. [HuffPo]
• Obama confirmed the month-long rumors today that Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton's former campaign manager, will be joining his campaign. That's gonna be interesting. [Fox News]
• Gore endorsing Obama? Prolly gonna be less exciting unless he shows up with pictures of Manbearpig. Why won't anyone take him serially? [Washington Post]

• In more interesting news, many people are using the web to learn things about the candidates! You know, like, instead of just getting it from the news. [Washington Post]
• Unfortunately, John McCain is not one of those people. He doesn't even know what his own climate change bill is about. [Gristmill]
• And he didn't use it to find out that he was about to hold a fundraiser with a guy who suggested rape victims "lie back and enjoy it" if it's inevitable. Of course, everyone else did. [CNN]

• Tim Russert passed away this afternoon at the age of 58 after collapsing at his office. He had just returned from a trip to Italy with his wife and son to celebrate the latter's graduation from Boston College (and, out of respect, I'll refrain from quoting BU's obligatory cheer here). If there's someone at NBC who hasn't teared up in the last couple of hours while talking about him, I missed it. [MSNBC]
• The rest of the news is after the jump because I figured Tim deserved that.

• Mostly because the next story had to be about R. Kelly getting acquitted. Dave Chappelle: legal genius. [MSNBC]
• Oh, by the way, men are necessary because us ladies like being rescued. Bitch, I kill my own damn spiders, replace my own damn tires, get my own drunk ass in to bed and I have only once needed rescuing and I called the cops. One was a woman. [National Review]
• Iowa's going to be the next Great Lake, by the way. Countdown to mentions of global warming in 5...4...3... [Washington Post]
• Fuck it, it's Friday the 13th, Tim Russert is dead, R. Kelly is free, stereotypes about white knights and imperiled maidens will live on forever and I need to get to the motherfucking liquor store because I am out of rum.

• In a 5-4 ruling today, the Supreme Court has (again) decided that the prisoners at Gitmo deserve some semblance of the rights afforded everyone else imprisoned in this country, like the right to protest to a judge the fact that they've been held for 6 years without charges. In his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia defended the right to not afford the detainees any rights because "America is at war with radical Islamists," but I'm sure he came up with some bullshit legal reasoning to discard the Constitution like he always does. Strict constructionalist my ass. [Washington Post]
• In other legal news, the jury is now considering its verdict in the R. Kelly case. [AP]
• In yet further legal news, Tony Rezko claims that federal prosecutors cajoled him to make up allegations against Barack Obama. He says, "I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people." Except, you know, when he bribes officials and commits frauds. [Politico]
• Oh, look, the first food named after Eliot Spitzer: "a gargantuan patty wrapped around braised shortribs (no foie gras, here) and slathered with barbecue sauce". Now if only the Mayflower could, um, swallow their pride and name a drink after him, my life would be complete. [OuttaMindOuttaSite]

• Speaking of assholes, Lou Dobbs may run for governor of New Jersey. I guess his neon coloring would fit in well in Trenton. [Politico]
• Oh, whatever, I'll keep up the asshole theme. Ron Paul's going to officially end his Presidential bid, but won't endorse John McCain and he's going to use his people's money to support other crazy Libertarian candidates. There are so many Republican Naders this year, it warms my bitter little heart. [NY Times]
• Oh, and Nicky Sarkozy's getting a brand new old plane to join the Mile High Club in. [Jaunted]
• Fine, I'll give you some good news. EMILY's List Ellen Malcolm and Madeline Albright gave speeches today at EMILY's annual luncheon and urged people to suck it up and vote Barack. Most people seemingly listened. [HuffPo]

• Because I can't resist a shout-out to the Bostonians among you, Big Papi (aka, David Ortiz, aka Red Sox number 34) became an American citizen today. [Boston Globe]
• In the citizenship travails of the less famous, Bullard High School valedictorian (and illegal immigrant) Arthur Mkoyan's deportation to Armenia has been delayed due to the introduction of a bill by Senator Diane Feinstein to make the whole family legal. Unfortunately, of the 236 bills like this introduced since 2005, only 4 passed. [CNN]
• Speaking of legal crap in California, a judge had a personal website that contained a bunch of porn that you had to monkey around in the root directory to access and now everyone is aghast that an old dude likes porn. [LA Times]
• Speaking of messing with computers, apparently China is hacking the computers of Congressional staff that work on China issues and one belonging to the Secretary of Commerce, possibly since 2006. [LA Times]

• As if you didn't know, gas prices aren't coming down any time soon. [HuffPo]
• Because of all those floods in the Midwest, neither are corn prices. [NY Times, Washington Post]
• But Obama VP-vetter Jim Johnson's going down, and not in the sexy Tom Colicchio way. [Wall Street Journal, Moe]
• And you know what else might be going down, if some people have their way? An unfettered First Amendment. I'd be more outraged, but we've already lost part of that search-and-seizure one, but, hey, check out the gun one! That one's still going strong. [NY Times]
• I was gonna look for something about wine doing a body good, but I'm not sure I can talk about that anymore. It might not be totally accurate and who knows how someone will choose to interpret the First Amendment after they read the last article. So, wine might or might not be good for me, but it'll definitely get me drunk if I drink enough. That's accurate.

• Hey, remember how we were going to, like, tax oil companies more and stuff? Yeah, not gonna happen anytime soon. [Washington Post]
• But, hey, monkeys can fish! So, as long as we don't eat all the fish or kill all the monkeys before we drive ourselves into extinction, they can totes rule the world later. [AP]
• Yes, that was a cheap distraction before I told you that we're totally fucked in Afghanistan and no one has any idea what to do about it. [Washington Independent]
• But that's ok, because Obama might pick Ret. Gen. James Jones, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, as VP, because now the Democratic party is all about getting the military dudes on the take so they can look "strong" and shit. Only, the story is actually complete bullshit because he's already a McCain adviser and someone is laughing at MSNBC besides me. [MSNBC, Politico]

• In other news of the stupid, Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma has crowned himself the new Miss South Carolina by releasing a commercial trumpeting his foreign policy credential: "Ethiopia. Zambia. Iraq. Twenty-nine intense trips in 12 years to the front — to the saddest parts of Africa." Oh, wait, where's Iraq again? [Washington Independent]
• And, apparently we're going to try to make all the lefty protesters crap their pants at once at the conventions this summer. Oh, that's a brilliant idea. Better shitting than shouting? [Fox News]
• But in good news, Republicans in the Senate have now defined electoral success in November as only losing eight seats to the Democrats. If they lose 9, they can't even filibuster, which is the only thing they give a shit about doing anyway. [HuffPo]
• And, just to mess with you, McCain said today, "I will veto every single beer." Damn that man, even if he is willing to call his home turf a swing state. [CNN, Washington Independent]

• So, hooray, Ted Kennedy is out of the hospital. [NY Times]
• But, tomatoes might kill all of us, and I ain't even talking about the mutant kind. [Washington Post, Killer Tomatoes, with full info from the FDA]
• But daily sex with your partner definitely won't, though it will propel you to the top of the NY Times most emailed list and, actually, that might be more depressing than killer tomatoes. [NY Times]
• But it's okay because the Democrats "stunning" refusal to grant telephone companies legal immunity for doing potentially illegal things means the terrorists are all winning so we'll all be dead soon, so you might as well eat some damn tomatoes and try fucking tonight. [NY Times]

• It doesn't help any that Michelle and Barack Obama are sending super-secret signals to al Qaeda through their open use of the fist pound. No, for real, someone said that. I wish I was kidding. [Politico]
• I will continue to play Cassandra and point out that 17% of Clinton supporters currently plan to vote for McCain in November and another 22% plan to stay home, and that doesn't even count all the people I know that keep telling me they're going to make her a write-in candidate. Oh, and she's totes McCain's new BFF, what with her "centrist foreign policy views," as McCain aide and former National Review writer Michael Goldfarb says. [CNN]
• But, I can always get cheered up by talking trash about Cheney. [LA Times]
• But there's always something to bring me down, like about how you can actually catch a dude giving you a roofie and call the cops and go to the hospital and be able to prove it but the prosecutors can claim there's not enough evidence. Paging BAngieB. [LA Times]
• Oh, and, naturally, we've diverted all this humanitarian aid money that used to go to doing humanitarian stuff in Pakistan to helping them help us fight the War on Terror, you know, like finding Osama and shit, which means that lots of good humanitarian projects, like helping women fight and recover from abusive relationships, are severely underfunded. [Washington Times]
• But, hey, Scott McClellan is going to testify under oath about what little he knows about the nefarious doings in the Bush Administration. That should accomplish exactly nothing [HuffPo]
• I think I'll stick with let's get drunk (on Bloody Marys, natch, since vodka kills germs) and screw.

• Nas wrote a song about Barack Obama and sampled Tupac. I couldn't figure out what the fuck Tupac was saying but I finally found the lyrics and apparently it's "Although it seems heaven-sent we ain't ready to have a black president." Then Nas references Calvin Coolidge to remind you, oh yeah, maybe we have gotten a little less racist since Tupac "died", which got me wondering, has hip-hop gotten less misogynist since Oochie Wally Wally? [XXL]
• Yeah and meanwhile some people who have not gotten less racist since the nineties work for the Clinton campaign, according to erstwhile Hillary supporter Rob Andrews, who now says her campaign was…well, uh, it's kind of vague, but whatever it was, it didn't work out, so I guess I should just move on to… [NJ]
• How it was a bad day out in the economy. The unemployment rate hit 5.5%, which is pretty bad when you consider how many people hate their jobs — unrelated: was anyone else unaware that the world's highest jobless rate belongs to Nauru? — and it was the biggest month-to-month rise in 22 years. Just in time for graduation! And, you know, the Dow fell 400 points and oil futures rose eleven bucks. [WSJ]

• There is an upside to all this for our country: and it's called wasting fewer resources. I know you probably thought that day would never come in this country, but I never thought Chuck Krauthammer would write something I agreed with. [Washington Post]
• Clint Eastwood and Spike Lee are having beef over the latter's two year old movie Flags Of Our Fathers, a movie (here's a David Denby review) I would like to have seen before weighing in) but like, isn't the whole point of Clint Eastwood is that he's trying to convey what actually happened, from all perspectives? I mean, he didn't have to make that follow-up about how the the Japs saw things, you know? (Yeah yeah yeah, joke.) Seriously though. [Guardian]

• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed thinks the courtroom artist drew his nose too wide. He lost a bunch of weight on the Guantanamo diet and totally turns out to be one of those secretly vain terror masterminds. [USA Today]
• This will shock you: Bob Dylan is voting for Barack Obama. Okay, I was kidding about the shocked part. [Times]
• There was this whole movement afoot to strongarm Barry into picking Hillary over some of his other bros but I think Hillary took a step back and said, "You know, this is bullshit, I don't care anymore, if he wants me he wants me," and although the hardest part about doing that is always the realization that he's probably gonna be all "It ain't me babe," I'm glad she did that. [NY Times]
• You just have to accept that in the Catholic Church shit takes awhile, and that if a priest is accused of pedophilia it might take a few years or even decades to remove him. Now, if he mocks Hillary Clinton and it ends up on YouTube, on the other hand, now that is when you gotta sever all ties right away. [Chicago Tribune] [The Root]
• Well this is a new one: alcohol cutting your risk of arthritis. I pretty much always thought gout was arthritis, and that you get that from wine, so this is pretty awesome news, not that I would even notice I had arthritis what with the shakes and whatnot. [BBC]

• What drives the economy and technological innovation and stuff? In some countries it's known "industrial policy." But in this country since the Cold War it's pretty much been porn, so I don't know what this guy is talking about. [Miller-McCune]
• The recession has driven Saks shoppers to Nordstrom, American Eagle shoppers to Aeropostale and everyone else to BJ's and Costco. [WSJ]
• Black people think Obama needs to remember the Sisterhood. This is not a particularly revolutionary essay but I'm linking to it because I read through it the whole way. [The Root]
• The other day I got an IM from my friend. "Could Lehman seriously become the next Bear Stearns just based on fear that it's the next Bear Stearns?" she asked. "Yup," I replied, and told the fear and greed aphorism. But apparently $60 billion worth of "tough to value" securities is another big reason. [Economist]
• Anyway, the big problem is there's a lot of greed, and not enough fear. Let me explain: we are the Fed, and bankers are dudes. We control the population supply, which seems like a pretty powerful position, but they have more time on their hands and thus much more elaborate ways of fucking with us to the point where we're basically their bitch. Anyway, this is called "moral hazard", which is almost as good a name for an okay first novel as The Undatable. [Economist] [WSJ]
• I'm thinking of changing the name of this feature, to something like "Narrow Thoughts" or "Profundities" or something. Deep thoughts, anyone?
• There is probably something totally awesome and life-affirming about being able to scale skyscrapers but, like…nah, I can't really see the point. [NYT]
• Oh yeah and you fucking dykes have sent me some pretty little sums to help get those feminists out of Basra! Why did I never wait tables on bitches like you? That's right, because we were all waiting tables together.

• Jimmy Carter thinks picking Hillary as a running mate would be "just about the worst mistake he's ever made." I'd say, something in the don't hold back tell us how you really feel Jimbo! vein but you know, duh. [Guardian]
• Political analysts and pundits the world over have hardons for Obama except Israel, where Jews are nervous he will sell them out and Arabs know better. [Wash Post]
• McCain sent a letter inviting Obama to debate him in a series of informal appearances in the lead-up to the conventions. This is the first good idea McCain has had in awhile and I think Barry should do it but I really fucking loathe the term "town hall." Like, don't you sometimes think if they just changed the name to something a little classier — say, "Oxford Union" or something like that — people might actually be challenged to ask intelligent questions? Just a thought. [WSJ]
• The last time the IRS busted a tax shelter scheme it got four billion dollars out of the deal but you'll surely sleep easier knowing some righteous judges are starting to take a stand in favor of the, ahem, "investment vehicles." [WSJ]

• The last time the IRS busted a tax shelter scheme it got four billion dollars out of the deal but you'll surely sleep easier knowing some righteous judges are starting to take a stand in favor of the, ahem, "investment vehicles." [WSJ]

• "Some think of Og as ruthless tyrant, splattered with the blood of his enemies. But me remember a gentler Og: modest and soft-spoken, splattered with the blood of a few close friends. With non-representational installation like Massive-Rocks-Arranged-in-Mysterious-Circle, we invite viewer to construct personal interpretation of monument, thus making powerful statement on subjective nature of memory. Besides, we not forget Great Bog War Memorial? When Shiny-Black-Slab first unveiled, it too condemned as pretentious and impersonal, and now it celebrated for quiet majesty." [NYT]
• Chris Matthews should probably stick to making grossly inaccurate, idiotic just-this-side-of-race-baiting "criticisms" about candidates he actually dislikes.[Media Matters]

• You know what I wish the media would do more of? Revisit 1968. So woefully underrated, that year. Anyway, apparently there was an unpopular war, and a bunch of Democrats competing to be the guy to end it, and there was a lot of bickering and faction-forming and blah blah blah assassinations and Nixon ended up getting the job. [Wash Post]

• Hillary suffered a coughing fit in South Dakota today and might give up altogether tomorrow. I have been suffering coughing fits all weekend and I haven't even managed to give up smoking, so I'm not placing any bets, but apparently there's a deal in the works for the Obama campaign to Bernanke her Bear Stearns. [Huff Po]
• Speaking! Krugman defends Bernanke on the grounds that there are no unions in America sending inflation spiraling of control with their wage demands like there were in the seventies. But hello Paul, you know what the Chinese were making in the seventies? [NYT]
• Also, I bet Americans had slightly less than a trillion dollars in credit card debt in the seventies. [WSJ]
• Stuff we did have in the seventies besides unions: regulations and trade barriers. Without those things to eradicate economic growth may be so hard to achieve that Barack Obama can call himself the "growth candidate" with his proposals to focus on preschool. [Wash Post]

• Ahmadinejad said something about how Jesus will come back and kill all the Jews this time. [Breitbart]
• Sadr City: 110 degrees, lacking potable water or a decent sewage system, but — your boss will be so stoked! — there's totally decent BlackBerry service! [WSJ]
• "I used to watch this mooncalf blunder his way through press conferences and think, Exactly where do we find such men? For the job of swabbing out the White House stables, yes. But for any task involving the weighing of words?" Hitch suggests you forego Scott McClellan's tell-all in favor of Doug Feith's epic defense of Don Rumsfeld, on account of a bunch of bullshit retorts to straw arguments no one seriously makes — "that there was no consideration given to postwar planning," for instance; oh please — and also, Feith's superior prose style. Natch. [Slate]
• Can "parenting classes" save the next generation of inbred underage incest victims from the clutches of Fundamentalist Mormon mind control? Well… [AP]
• Ted Kennedy's brain surgery was successful. Now comes the fun part: radiation and chemo. Good luck.[WSJ]
• Matt Drudge as microcosm for the nation's ideological shift. [Politico]
• Henry Louis Gates talks to James Watson and finds him to not be a racist but a "racialist"; Gates explores his own love-hate relationship with DNA; generally depressing story reveals James Watson has a low IQ. [TheRoot]

Technology is not our friend today, so we'll make this short.
• Dana Perino used the word "puzzled" to describe the Bush Administration's reaction to Scott McClellan's takedown, which is funny because, as we "reported" earlier, he used the word "puzzled" to describe his reaction to President Bush's puzzlement over the fact that people would get upset about him starting a trillion dollar war for no actual reason. [AP]

• The shitty way economic growth begets famine. [NY Times]
• The thing no one mentions about this "Rock Band" game, which I have only experienced as an observer, is how listening to people playing it is sort of like that time Roseanne sang the national anthem, only for hours because it's so "addictive." [Salon]

• "The strange class war that defined Nixonland renews itself endlessly, with different leaders and different symbols, but always with the same dynamic: the striving squares revenging themselves upon the hip and the snooty. Backlash is a chronic condition now, and one of the reasons is that hipness is chronic, too. The '60s culture that infuriated Nixon and his followers is everywhere today, because hipness and 'revolution' have become a default mode of corporate speech. Youth had nothing to do with it: It happened thanks to the need for ever-accelerating novelty, reverence for a supposedly enlightened cyber-vanguard, and the great god 'creativity.'" Sooooo…basically the primacy of such resilient and defiantly unhip pop cultural touchstones as The Hills and American Idol paved the way for Obama? [WSJ]

• Not that he is