• Obama's finally decided on a running mate! He's just not going to tell you who, though, so there. He says it's someone without a big ego, so Karen Tumulty thinks it isn't Biden, CNN's confirmed it's not Sam Nunn, and I wonder where on Earth he found a politician without a huge ego. [Associated Press, Time, CNN]
• Speaking of enormous (and undeserved) egos, Rush Limbaugh's at it again, complaining that us Lesbian Feminazi Bonerkillers won't let him hit "girls." Oh, and Barack Obama is a "little black man-child." Dude, are the people that syndicate his show just going to let him show up in a white hood, too? [Media Matters]
• By the way, McCain has finally found a point below which he won't stoop to pander to the electorate — he won't take a pledge to serve only one term (that he wouldn't intend to keep anyway) just so people will stop "wondering" about his advanced age. Glad to know there's a floor! [Politico]

• The Justice Department has reportedly decided that the FBI shouldn't have to have any reasonable "basis for suspicion" to start spying on people. That's code for "it should be cool to racially and or religiously profile people," if you didn't catch the subtext. Has anyone been to the National Archives lately to see if the Constitution is actually still there? [NY Times]
• By the way, we're placing missile interceptors in Poland to head off nuclear attacks... from Iran and North Korea. You know, since Poland stands in between us and North Korea, like, totally. [Attackerman]
• By the way, oil prices are going up because of military and diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and Russia, which — if like many Americans you're a little sketchy on geographical details — does sit just the other side of Poland from us and Western Europe. Totally unrelated, though. [Associated Press]

MEGAN: Spencer, do you really think that Republican donors will be quaking in their boots when their secretaries start opening letters from MoveOn founder Tom Mattzie letting them know that he knows they're giving money to Republican-y groups?

SPENCER: The thing to know about Tom is that he's relentless. He carries twin shotguns that he twirls like drumsticks as the city burns behind him. He lights a cigar off the smoldering ruins left in the wake of a missile strike that failed to kill him. in the movie version, Michael Bay will have to literally sew Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura together in order to get a proper portrayal of Mattzie, because one action hero just can't do the job alone.

MEGAN: That makes him sound ever-so-slightly more rugged and sexy than he is. Let's not go overboard. He will likely not appreciate this comparison, but he reminds me of Frank Lutz. Only smarter.

SPENCER: My question for you is do you really think Mattzie — who I like a lot, if you can't tell — would do this if Freedom's Watch really kept its donor lists anonymous?

MEGAN: There's anonymous, and there's anonymous. I mean, yes, Freedom Watch spokesman Ed Patru is right, they don't have to disclose their donors to the IRS. But if I'm guessing, and I am (and guessing moreso that Tom's not stupid enough to put it out there if it weren't already a fait accompli), he's already got the lists through a shady donor list swap done through a 3rd party. Having worked at a nonprofit, technically-nonpartisan-but-Republican-leaning think tank, this is how it's done. Heritage shares donors with ATR shares donors with CEI etc. It's a money-maker for everyone, and it's all arranged through 3rd party arrangers.

SPENCER: All the GOP quotes in the NYT piece struck me as bluster — like, Sheldon "Evilest Jew Alive" Adelson surely knows what his legal options are, but a lot of potential Freedoms' Watch/Corsi donors probably don't.

MEGAN: Well, I mean, I can't imagine the low-end donors are the ones he really wants, and the rich ones aren't going to be that worried.

SPENCER: so who would the likely 3rd parties be here? Who could sell the lists to Tom?

MEGAN: Well, but if Tom's good with the dirty tricks, and here's hoping he is, then he could've practically bought it directly. It's more how he would make himself or his organization seem like the sort of group Freedom Watch would trade with. Or how much money he offered to do so.

SPENCER: A friend just emailed to say he heard Freedoms Watch on the air on Missouri radio running downballot ads for a congressional race. Hmmmmm maybe Mattzie is using a cutout himself LIKE THE PUNISHER.

MEGAN: Um, ok, I think it's time for a segue. If we're on Freedom Watch, we should at least mention the fact that their completely inept fired former President is suing Kelsey Grammer. So maybe that's how Tom knows — someone is short of cash and respect. And certainly self-respect.

SPENCER: Let's insult John McCain for saying stupid shit like this:

“What do you think that Saddam Hussein would be doing with oil at $120, $125, $130 a barrel?,” McCain asked. “What do you think he’d be doing? I’ll tell you what he’d be doing. He’d be doing what he said he was committed to doing. And that’s acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction, which he did twice before.”

Your first instinct is to gently tell the Senator that there wouldn't be oil at these prices if we hadn't fucking invaded Iraq.

MEGAN: My first instinct, actually, was to chortle at the thought that McCain is the Amazing Kreskin and knew ALL of this when he voted to invade Iraq.

SPENCER: And then your second instinct is to notice how fortuitous Obama is to have the question of the original judgment over the invasion to be once again mooted as an issue.

MEGAN: Can you imagine him in a turban with a crystal ball and stuff? Go ahead and try. It's funny.

SPENCER: Man, you and your Johnny Carson-ass vanilla humor.

MEGAN: I'm going to ignore your comments about my humor. I'm bringing the average age of the room in which I'm currently sitting down to 70.

SPENCER: The only way McCain possibly looks prescient is if he divorces The Surge from The War (ceding for a second the wisdom of the surge).

MEGAN: Can you Surge without a War? I mean, really? I don't think McCain's messaging machine is good enough to make the entire country re-imagine the war as not a singular effort that started when we invaded and hasn't ended yet.

SPENCER: That's why McCain wants the voters to think the war's balances were zeroed in spring 07. But if he's returning to the question of invading, obviously Obama's judgment is superior. and then McCain's first/last/only argument for his candidacy is nullified and the universe's balance is finally righted.

I'm with you — McCain's actual argument for the war is too complex for voters: we have to stay because if we don't it'll sink into chaos even though what I advocated has brought violence down and we're winning but we're not winning hard enough and that's why we can go by 2013 mostly although we should actually stay 100 years as long as no one dies and I'm cold when is Murder She Wrote on?

MEGAN: Murder She Wrote is on every night at midnight on the Hallmark Channel. D'oh. Damn old people osmosis.

SPENCER: Which is why he's just like Surges For Everyone! Surge In Afghanistan! Economic Surge!
But speaking of old people...

MEGAN: I mean, isn't another word for "economic surge"... "bubble?

SPENCER: Let's talk about this David Broder column — what did you make of it?

MEGAN: I read it and was like, ok, so, let me understand this thesis. Obama decided to campaign for his own candidacy rather than spend the summer with McCain going to 10 town hall meetings at McCain's suggestion and using his own campaign staff to pack the room the way McCain uses his, let alone the logistics work, instead of having staff do GOTV efforts. And so McCain's plan — which he shouldn't have counted on anyway — goes flat. And then McCain betrays his promises about negative campaigning and spends a month going negative and blames it on the other guy not attending the events that he was never going to attend anyway and McCain pretend like he wouldn't've gone negative if Obama had joined him and people are supposed to believe that? But, he did convince David Broder, apparently, since Broder didn't bother questioning that "logic."

SPENCER: First on the issue: how has Obama gone negative on McCain? The equivalence is absurd: McCain intimates that Obama is an unAmerican elitist N-WORD terrorist and Obama says... McCain isn't a maverick.

MEGAN: Oh, and he had the audacity to point out that McCain was intimating that Obama doesn't "look" Presidential, so Obama's playing the race card by pointing out that McCain is playing with racial stereotypes.

SPENCER: Demonstrating the daffiness of the column is Broder's inclusion of this:

I asked Obama if he had any regrets about turning down McCain's early June invitation to start the joint appearances back then. He said, "I think the notion that somehow as a consequence of not having joint appearances, Senator McCain felt obliged to suggest that I'd rather lose a war to win a campaign doesn't automatically follow. I think we each have control over ourselves and our campaigns, and we have to take responsibility for that."

A halfway introspective columnist would have said, "Oh shit, this quote exposes the weakness of my thesis. I'd better come up with something else."

MEGAN: Man, Obama needs to stop qualifying his attacks. "Doesn't automatically follow"? It doesn't follow. at. all.

SPENCER: Yeah, agreed. but David Broder — even after he took the Post's buyout he will. not. stop. writing. he is to journalism what Tucker Max is to sex.

MEGAN: Well, that assumes that Tucker Max had actual sex.

SPENCER: Well even better, because there ain't any actual journalism here.

MEGAN: Yes, I've "heard" that involves unbiased reporting.

SPENCER: No it doesn't! you don't start on me now! I make a living off biased reporting, which is more honest and transparent than this shit Broder does. Broder's problem isn't bias, it's total lack of rigor and intellectual discipline.

MEGAN: There is no objectivity anyway, but the subjective appearance thereof.

SPENCER: But let's celebrate the implosion of the Tennessee Jew Baiter

MEGAN: I mean, I actually feel bad because Nikki Tinker isn't a terrible person, but Steve Cohen has got the worst of the deal of representing that district from Day 1.

SPENCER: So Nikki Tinker, a one-time Harold Ford protege, ran an ad against her Jewish primary opponent in which she said Rep. Steven Cohen was sullying "OUR churches" but unsupportive of school prayer — and got fucking trounced last night. i dunno, Tinker seems like a pretty terrible person from this Jew's perspective.

MEGAN: Ok, well, what I meant was that she didn't seem like a terribly bad person schooled in the Cynthia McKinney school of anti-Semetic politics until then. That ad was fucking over the line, it was really offensive and I was pre-disposed to like her as a female candidate. So, thank goodness for that, even if Obama went all mealy-mouthed in his non-condemnation. I miss the old Obama.

SPENCER: Why is what he said mealy-mouthed?

“These incendiary and personal attacks have no place in our politics and will do nothing to help the good people of Tennessee,” Obama said in a statement. “It’s time to turn the page on a politics driven by negativity and division so that we can come together to lift up our communities and our country.”

MEGAN: Well, it is compared to when he weighed in for Barrow.

SPENCER: ?

MEGAN: So, John Barrow's a Blue Dog (i.e., conservative) white Dem in Georgia who was facing a primary fight there, and Obama cut an ad for him. He didn't even mention Tinker or Cohen by name, and Cohen backed him before the Tennessee primary. One of your colleagues wasn't impressed by that, actually.

SPENCER: But was it a negative ad? I'm not understanding why the two cases are similar.

MEGAN: Well, I guess my point is that when it came to Barrow, Obama was in the trenches cutting ads for the incumbent even when it wasn't a terribly negative campaign. But in this case, the campaign's been getting ugly for a while, and the ad was just the last thing, and rather than coming out and saying "I support Steve Cohen and these ads are disgusting," he issues a statement about his opposition to negative campaigning.

SPENCER: But it's better if he does that, isn't it? Because now he's on the record as being opposed to, say, comparing your opponent to racist groups or attacking his religion and iwonder who's going to cut those ads in the future. If he just makes it about the TN race it's... just about the TN race.

MEGAN: That's a good point, I hadn't thought about it that way.

SPENCER: I'm an enlightening motherfucker.

MEGAN: Hey, there, how is London-Town.

MOE: Hey I just wrote something about being here. It is dumb. Mostly it has that European problem where nothing is open when you want it to be open because you have insomnia or your period or whatever
MOE: In my case, both.
MOE: They are really really really into the environment here.
MEGAN: Does that mean no tampons or something?
MEGAN: Also, yes, I hate stupid laws in Europe where everything closes down and nothing is open on Sundays and crap.

MOE: No I mean, apparently there are organic tampons or whatever. No what it means is just that it seems to be all you read about, or like, I'm at this pub, and it's a stupid pub, like it seems very chain-y and airport-y, like the British version of ... what's a chain pub? Elephant & Castle or something. Only, you know, really stunningly horrible food, like you hear about. Anyway apparently the fish and chips are made with SUSTAINABLE COD. Like, good grief. And yeah I'm sure that makes sense. And I hate those laws too. I like the laws that say you can't have as many sales as you can in America, because I think price differentiation run amok is a big problem there, but there should be a law here that SOMETHING in every neighborhood should be open 24 hours, just to keep transplanted Americans sane.
MOE: Did you ever see that abortion movie? 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days?
MEGAN: No, I'm bad about seeing movies. I go through spurts where I see a bunch and then I go without for a really long time. It was around in my chaste period, so to speak. Also, I hate chain pubs and try not to go to chain restaurants, but, um, the homemade potato chips at Elephant and Castle have called to me, I won't deny.
MOE: It's about Romania and it's supposedly very depressing, even though I didn't really find it that depressing, except to the extent that the protagonist's boyfriend shared that very common boyfriend problem where he is totally clueless and that was depressing, but really the most depressing part was just how DARK EVERYTHING WAS and how night is dark and eerie in Europe in a lot of places.
MEGAN: I think that's more of a film meme than a reality. I never found Germany particularly eerie at night.
MOE: Yeah I'm trying to think of the name of the Irish pub chain in Philly at 15th and Locust or thereabouts. I can't believe I can't remember the name of this place. God I shouldn't have had white wine. And I found Vienna dark. Not eerie, just lifeless.
MOE: And then there's all those places with their communism etc. etc.

MEGAN: I believe you are thinking of Fado. There's one in DC, too, by the Verizon Center.
MOE: I'm intrigued by Frank Rich's use of an emoticon in his headline. Ah yes! Fado. God the food there is some fucking masterful cuisine compared to the meal I just had.
MEGAN: Oh, Frank Rich, angry women do not use emoticons.

MOE: ok so…what I was going to say before my fucking Wi-fi which I paid ten pounds for crapped out is that I guess we should discuss McCain's War College thesis.
MOE: Also: Condi chastising Israelis for all their ugly settlements, which is the topic of a new and good-sounding book called Palestinean Walks …and speaking of which a Palestinian birthday party was ruined by some Israeli soldiers recently and so there's that.

MEGAN: Ah, ok, well, so, John McCain's thesis. I read the whole thing. It's kind of interesting on its face, but the fact that he doesn't acknowledge in it having been one of the tortured men about which he's talking makes its central conceit a bit, um, torturous.
MOE: HA. You read the whole thesis? Seriously?
MEGAN: Yes. I, um, didn't have much to do yesterday.
MEGAN: It was interesting, it's basically trying to get at a manner for training troops to survive being POWs. The New York Times piece you linked to points out some factual inaccuracies, the most egregious of which is that McCain thinks that the men that "broke" the easiest were the ones that joined the war after the country turned against it but he's not correct on his timing.
MOE: Also, oh god, there's Obama's Fathers Day speech on absentee dads, and one noted absentee dad being Tim Russert, who like I told you yesterday reminds me of my own dad, ABSENT the ridiculous tie which is his signature. I thought Pareene's obit was sweet, but moving back to my dad he actually attended the War College, and moving back to the War College that is where John McCain wrote this thing
9:25 AM
MEGAN: Oh, God, Russert, dude, on MTP yesterday, Carville and Matalin and Brokaw were crying, and then his producer started and they had to run the tribute video two minutes early because no one could hold it together any longer.
MOE: Oh man, that is so fucking sad. Is there a clip?
MEGAN: Here's the end, as he struggled to keep it really together, but he literally broke down a little earlier.
9:30 AM
MOE: Oh god I can't watch that. I'm already dehydrated. Jesus.
MEGAN: The whole thing was really, really sad. Anyway, so, John McCain's thesis. Less sad than that.
MOE: Yeah I'm amusing myself now with stop sitting in the house watching SportsCenter and “Don’t get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation." Yeah, don't pat yourself on the back till your super sweet 16.
MEGAN: I mean, I think McCain has an interesting point about the need for better training, I think it's absolutely prescient when it comes to the idea that there were around 550 POWs and that the public's outcry about that small number of people allowed the North Vietnamese to hijack peace negotiations and the like.
MOE: Yeah, that was a very good point I hadn't considered as much, because I never even really knew the number. What was the breakdown between resisters and "collaborators"?
MEGAN: Many more resisters than collaborators.
9:40 AM
MEGAN: But my most favorite part, buried in the text, is this:

Many ex-POWs have stated that due to the length and divisiveness of the Vietnam conflict, if the policy of the North Vietnamese towards the captured Americans had been of strict adherence to the Geneva Convention the North Vietnamese might have returned a group of men who would have been grateful and sympathetic to their problems in that part of the world. Instead, a dedicated group of anti-communists have emerged from that ordeal.

But maybe I'm just influenced by the whole Gitmo ruling last week.
MEGAN: I guess, however, that the intervening years have changed John's mind.

"These are people who are not citizens; they do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have," McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said at a town hall meeting in Pemberton, New Jersey, yesterday. "There are some bad people down there."

MOE: Yeah that's what I'm reading now. So he doesn't think they should be tortured, because he was tortured, but the Gitmo ruling was "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country" because he…doesn't love democracy so much he wants to extend its rights to terror suspects…? What blows my mind about this shit is that the guys in Guantanamo are such a collection of clueless moderate bystandery wrong-place-wrong-time types. And which commenter pointed out OBL's driver's sixth grade education, not to bring it back to Obama's speech… anyway… it's just like, has he looked at the charges against these guys? I mean, McCain is a senator, he probably has access to the ACTUAL evidence against these guys.
MOE: He like knows how shit it is.
MOE: Oh also in the wake of massive protests the Saudis have finally agreed to produce more oil but they're telling Europe to lower their gas taxes. Which I guess have something to do with the $40 cab ride I took back to my hotel yesterday? Anyway, not bitter here. But anyway economists think if it weren't for speculators and the natural inclination of markets to hyperbolize these things oil would be $80 to $100 a barrel but what can you do.
MEGAN: Or he doesn't care because he's running for President and the far right hates the ruling so why not compromise his supposed principles yet again and say what he's supposed to say?
MEGAN: I love how the Saudis are all like, lower your taxes but you know they ain't lowering the royalties they get (aka, taxes) from foreign oil companies. Mmmm, hypocrisy smells soooo carbon-y.
MOE: Issue 1. But why? The only way he can win is by appealing to moderates who probably believe on some level this terror war thing was, as Frank Fukuyama pointed out, a bad idea, right? Or do feminists want Supreme Court Justices to the right of John Roberts? (Who btw did not take part in the case I guess?) (anyway) I have a headache and I need to post this.

MOE: Did you check out Geraldine Ferrarro giving Shep Smith a beej? How could someone be SO HYPER AWARE OF anything even remotely construable as "sexist" still be saying things like "black journalists who are Obama surrogates like Bob Herbert." Because yes, Bob Herbert is so simpleminded, so singlemindedly focused on electing one of "his own" that — oh yes, and the only reason he has his New York Times platform is surely tokenism in the first place — why would a progressive white woman even read him to begin with?
MOE: You know he doesn't have anything worth saying about misogyny

MEGAN: Like Shep wants a beej from a girl...
MOE: Dude
MOE: I'm shaking from anger.
MEGAN: Also she wants an "independent group to do a study on media." Like Media Matters?
MOE: Yeah maybe they should check out that Obama surrogate Bob Herbert who hasn't had anything nice to say about Hillary in the past six months because he's so sexist

MOE: OH EXCEPT WELL THIS FIVE MONTHS AGO

If there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media, it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America

MEGAN: Also, so, can we check her crazy hair? She's got a tuft sticking up in the back. How did that happen?
MOE: Okay, I can't handle it anymore, let's just have a moment of silence for Ted Kennedy's brain. I had dinner with Jennifer Gerson last night and she said that as an intern for MSNBC she was once charged with escorting him up a platform and he was outraged to find that he had to climb steps. "There were literally two steps," she said. My kind of septugenarian! Although…not if I stay in this apartment!!
MEGAN: Well, I think his knees are shit. But, yes, it doesn't surprise me. But brain cancer sucks. I'll bet he thought his heart would get him.
MOE: Okay, in another window SinisterRouge is calming me down. (Imagine if Geraldine Ferrarro was a commenter! She'd get put on notice, and then she'd just go crazy and her last comment would be something like "Hang that darkie from a tree!" and then she'd claim it was a joke and then no one would pay attention to MY brand of "controversy" anymore.)
MEGAN: I love that she's the one calming you down today. I mean, Ferraro just makes me sad. I'm sad that's she's turned into this caricature of a nasty old woman whose racism shows and who is so concerned with her supposed victimhood that she dismisses the claims of others. She was the first female candidate for the vice presidency of the United motherfucking States of America and she's stomping all over the legacy of that. I realize that not everyone reading this would remember, but I remember 1984 and I remember thinking it was, like, totally normal that a woman be running and then realizing it wasn't and thus how cool she was. Only now she's not cool. So I'm more saddened than outraged.

MOE: Uh, in other news Hillary won Kentucky by a 30-point margin. Um, dumb question: are there no black people in Kentucky or something? What's up with that? Also oil went above $130 a barrel, another new record.
MEGAN: I have deliberately avoided looking at gas prices while in New York, a situation helped by the fact that the only times I've passed any have been in a cab and I've been intoxicated. I'm sure they're high.
MOE: A friend of mine asked me the other day why oil prices were so expensive and I was like "1. China 2. India 3. The market tends to overreact 4. no exploration or real incentive for exploration." But I forgot to add "the dollar." And seriously regarding the exploration thing I'm not sure whether that's still true.
MEGAN: Also, Obama barely campaigned in Kentucky. I think despite his crazy fundraising skills, he's conserving his money at this point to get through the convention and Pennsylvania sort of proved that sometimes its just a waste. He doesn't need Kentucky, so he didn't spend so much to make that margin tigihter.
MOE: Kentucky is only like 7.5% black.

Gross reports having students of his at the University of Kentucky tell him they had never seen or talked to a black person before coming to Lexington, a college town of nearly 300,000 people. In some areas of Kentucky, Gross says there's perhaps only one or two black families there.

MOE: Also Kentucky declared neutrality during the Civil War…
MEGAN: I actually met someone once in her forties who had never seen a black person until she left her state. It was, um, interesting. I'm amazed it still happens.
MOE: Though it was a slave state and in the early 1830s slaves comprised a quarter of the population. They just never had much of a plantation economy…Is it possible my perception of Kentucky has been skewed because some huckster from Indiana decided to dress in "stereotypical Southern gentleman type clothing to promote his restaurant chain"?? Um why yes it may be!
MOE: Oh in other news Hezbollah has veto power over everything the Lebanese government does now.
MEGAN: Oh, well, that's great. I love how having the power to scuttle stuff is important.

MEGAN: Kentucky was an okay state. I drove through it once. It was sorta pretty, plus, obviously, bourbon.
MOE: OBVIOUSLY
MOE: So, here's something else. I was on the train yesterday with this lady who was really nice and let me use her phone. Her computer said "Property of the World Bank" and she told me how she was coming up to New York to present a new survey on economic development and by George it would appear she was not pulling a fast one on me! And check this:

But departing from free-market orthodoxy, the panel also said that governments had a far greater role to play in development than was recognized in the markets-are-king 1980s and 1990s. To boost growth, the panel urged developing nations to spend heavily on infrastructure and endorsed, with some reservation, government subsidies to build local industries.

MOE: You don't say!

Among the findings that are bound to stoke the most controversy: democracy isn't essential for growth. Autocratic governments that allow "vigorous debate" internally on economic policies are sufficient, the report said. Free trade isn't a prerequisite either. Some fast-growing economies kept barriers high to imports, even as they promoted exports, the report said.

MEGAN: Oh, wait, someone noticed China! Cool!
MOE: Well yeah and who did China notice? Why…Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia and also Thailand!
MOE: But what I really love is this:

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers praised the commission's focus on government-led growth policies, but said its emphasis on economic winners didn't fully take into account how industrial policies deepened corruption in many countries and failed to ignite growth there. "It's like looking only at those who made fortunes in the stock market without diversifying their portfolios" to figure out the best way to get rich, he said.

MEGAN: Indonesia's kind of a hot mess, though, and has oil/natural gas, so I think that's a little different. But otherwise, I agree with your list.
MOE: Um, actually, looking at the United States economy is what that is like.

MOE: Well yes, Indonesia is an incredible mess, which is why China managed to grab so much manufacturing business from them as Suharto's government crumbled.
MEGAN: Indonesia is one of those places I'd really like to visit. I don't know why. I wish I was like my friend Tim, who parlayed a Masters in theology to a job as an investment banker, saved a shitload of money and bailed on life to travel the world for a year. I am really jealous of him right now, and not just because I keep looking at his flickr account.
MOE: Which speaks to Larry Summers' point, but the fact is that Korea and Taiwan both paid close attention to Japan's climb up the "economic value ladder" into more sophisticated manufacturing. When you manufacture computer chips, for instance, which are by definition very small and shrink in size every 18 months, the cost of sending them down the Insatiable Consumption Esophagus toward the US is not that great. So your population can eventually see much more of the cost! But semiconductor plants are incredibly expensive and sophisticated to operate, so while they're harder to transplant in other countries — though the Taiwanese have certainly been doing just that in China despite the fact that you still can't get a direct flight between the two countries — they also require a lot of PLANNING. INVESTMENT. An educational strategy.
MOE: And then! Much to the chagrin of shareholders…semiconductors are a highly cyclical business! So while the demand keeps growing, sometimes you have to sell them at a loss!
MOE: It can be painfully low-margin…again something the market doesn't reward!
MEGAN: Oh, God, stop, visions of grad school case study horrors dancing in my head!
MOE: BUT. Your countrymen will thank you!
MOE: Sorry, it just completely kills me that you mention how we need better economic and industrial planning in this country to some people and they act like you're fucking advocating the next Great Leap Forward.
MEGAN: I mean, the problem with industrial planning is that you take the concept, throw in 20,000 businsess lobbyists and 535 Members and Senators and you come up with a bullshit plan that won't help anyone that really needs it and will help whomever has the political capital to get help. Ahhh, democracy.