We know Sarah Palin isn't the biggest fan of Vogue, but we think she'd do really well guest-editing her own issue. So we've worked up a sample cover in the style of our Cover Lies feature (in which we expose how little relationship ladymags, like Sarah Palin, have to reality). While the real Vogue bows to the recession with its $300 "Steal" of the Month, Palin could show us how to get a $150,000 wardrobe for free — and how to pick a $700/night hotel, complete with robe and slippers. In lieu of book reviews, she could offer up a bunch of snide remarks about Katie Couric — "the perky one" probably can't read anyway. And for balance, Palin could add some media elite contributors, like Trig-birther Andrew Sullivan and Rebecca Johnson. (Johnson works for the fake America but the real Vogue, and says all Palin wanted to talk about in her much-maligned interview was "drilling for oil" — but what else is there, anyway?) In fact, right after a Jeffrey Steingarten piece on moose-meat, Going Vogue should include a free sample of premium Alaska crude. We hear it gets rid of both wrinkles and endangered wildlife.

Fact Check: Palin's Book Goes Rogue On Some Facts [AP, via Yahoo News]
Palin's Katie Couric Myths [Daily Beast]
Palin's Ego Trip [Daily Beast]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is once again using her clout to shed light on important issues that were pushed to the side during the bloodthirsty Bush Administration. In addition to making women's issues a cornerstone of national security, Clinton now turns her attention to "food security" - the new term for hunger:

Food security represents the convergence of several issues: droughts and floods caused by climate change, swings in the global economy that affect food prices, and spikes in the price of oil that increase transportation costs.

So food security is not only about food, but it is all about security. Chronic hunger threatens individuals, governments, societies, and borders.

People who are starving or undernourished and can't care for their families are left with feelings of hopelessness and despair, which can lead to tension, conflict, even violence. Since 2007, there have been riots over food in more than 60 countries.

The failures of farming in many parts of the world also have an impact on the global economy. Farming is the only or primary source of income for more than three-quarters of the world's poor. When so many work so hard but still can't get ahead, the whole world is held back. [...]

Our approach will be informed by experience. We have spent too many years and dollars on development projects that have not yielded lasting results. But we have learned from these efforts. We know that the best strategies emanate from those closest to the problems, not foreign governments or institutions thousands of miles away. We know that development works best when it is seen as investment, not aid.

But soft! What light through yonder op-ed page breaks?

It is common sense, and Hillary Clinton is the sun!

I can't believe it: Someone with a position of authority can finally look at our global political strategy, realize that escalating violence, pre-emptive strikes, and strategic assassinations may not be the best policies for all situations. Finally, someone is looking at the root causes of rage and national instability and is looking toward solutions that involve making investments in humanity instead of the technology of war. Cue CeCe Peniston!

And then, I had to read a little op-ed called "Drill."

Sarah Palin, why are you trying to drag America back into the eco-dark ages? I mean, really. The rest of the world is working to reduce its dependency on natural resources and you're advocating to drill for oil? You want to tap an already short supply for short term gain? Why don't you advocate to bring back coil mines, while you're at it?

Palin writes:

Given that we're spending billions of stimulus dollars to rebuild our highways, it makes sense to think about what we'll be driving on them. For years to come, most of what we drive will be powered, at least in part, by diesel fuel or gasoline. To fuel that driving, we need access to oil. The less use we make of our own reserves, the more we will have to import, which leads to a number of harmful consequences. That means we need to drill here and drill now.

WTF?

For the same reason, the federal government shouldn't push a single, uni­versal approach to alternative-powered vehicles. Electric cars might work in Los Angeles, but they don't work in Alaska, where you can drive hundreds of miles without seeing many people, let alone many electrical sockets.

Governor Palin: You do know cars run on gas, right? If there are enough gas stations to allow people to drive through Alaska, surely they could find a way to add electric ones. But Palin is tilting against a windmill - the electric car won't be a widespread option for some time, which is why most of the auto industry is focusing on how to reduce gas mileage and many Americans are looking for was to reduce their dependency by car sharing programs, buying more fuel efficient cars, and simply driving less.

Palin ignores science, facts, and innovation in her piece, twisting the truth about our dire circumstances into the best political greenwashing I have ever seen. She finally ends the piece using in this ridiculous campaign rehash:

Alternative sources of energy are part of the answer, but only part. There's no getting around the fact that we still need to "drill, baby, drill!" And if those in D.C. say otherwise, we need to tell them: "Yes, we can!"

No, we fucking can't.

This is not the answer.

If you want to provide stable American jobs, the answer is green-collar jobs, not refineries. I really don't understand the desire to keep pushing for a band-aid when we could just start fixing the wound by moving toward green energy. And we need to do it now, before we hit a real crisis.

Now, I don't understand how someone without a job is still worthy of a Gallup poll on popularity, but apparently that isn't going so well.

[H]er current 40% favorable rating is the lowest for her since she became widely known after last year's Republican convention.

Not only is Palin at her lowest favorability yet, her unfavorability ratings have hit a high of 50%. She's also tanking among independents: Only 41% view her favorably, versus 48% who view her unfavorably.

This a joke people. I'm tired of hearing about Palin. I'm sick of hearing a bunch of nonsense dressed up as policy.

And by the way, Palin, it's time to retire that phrase.

Seeding A Safer World [The Guardian]
Drill [National Review]
Palin's Popularity Sinks To A New Low [The Plum Line]

Quinn peddles so many offensive stereotypes about Middle Eastern countries, the status of women in those countries and the interplay of national wealth and personal poverty (not like we'd know anything about that in America) that it's hard to know where to begin, really.

But let's start here: Quinn identifies Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman as "the most oil rich countries in the Middle East." Um, no. While Saudi Arabia does, indeed, have the largest oil reserves in the Middle East, Bahrain is an island nation with no fucking oil. The UAE is at least 5th on the list of most oil rich countries in the region; Qatar is 8th and Oman is 11 on the list of 19. So, her premise starts off false and doesn't get any better.

She then states — without attribution, of course — that in all of those countries, fewer women vote; fewer women are in Parliament; there is a reluctance to grant women the vote; there are fewer women in the work force; and women have fewer rights than elsewhere in the Middle East with less oil. But, for instance, Yemen has less oil than Oman, and yet Oman has a higher literacy rate among women than Yemen by far. I could spend hours researching and debunking the claims she's made, but perhaps it's just easiest to say: not every country in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia. Women's rights, education levels and incomes vary widely throughout the Middle East and within countries, as they do everywhere.

But, we could take the UN's Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and its Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) as (very) rough guides of where women are at in terms of what Sally Quinn is supposedly talking about. The GDI takes into account life expectancy, literacy rate, educational levels and estimated earned income disparities between men and women to rank countries (the U.S. is 16) and the GEM takes into account the seats held by women in Parliament; the percent of total female legislators, female officials and managers; the percentage of female professionals and technical workers; and the ratio of female to male earned income to determine countries rankings (the U.S. is 15). So, here they are matched up against the rankings of countries "in the Middle East" (yes, I know Sudan and several Central Asian countries are on there, but it's a US government chart and a useful comparison):
Notice anything striking? Like an utter lack of coherence of oil reserves and how the countries rank in terms of the GDI and GEM? In fact, the two best countries in the actual Middle East — Kuwait and the UAE, respectively — are near the top of the list in terms of their oil reserves, and the worst country on both in the Middle East (Yemen) has relatively little oil. The only country that's relatively high on both scales — Bahrain — is the country that doesn't have any oil despite what Sally Quinn says.

She also ignores glaring income disparities in some oil-rich countries in the Middle East, refers to the women in oil-rich countries as "cossetted," suggests that they have no economic need to work and even says, "They can shop, they can gossip, they can go to lunch," as though all the women in oil rich countries in the Middle East are like the Real Housewives of Orange County in abayas. Oh, and she adds,

"I think most of them are bored out of their minds, the rich ones."

Because, naturally, she's conducted intensive sociological research in this area. And then she says:

"I think a lot of women, and this certainly goes for women in this country, too, would probably rather spend more time at home when they have little children and not have to work full-time. But I think that most women would prefer a more fulfilling life than just sitting around eating bon-bons all day."

Gosh, there's no stereotypes there about the role of women in the Middle East, nothing culturally insensitive about calling to mind harems and women of leisure when talking about women in the Middle East, nothing offensive to American women to suggest that we'd all like to stay home and exclusively care for our children when they are little. If she could overgeneralize more about what large swaths of ethnically, religiously, culturally and nationally diverse women all want, she'd probably strain something.

The study she was supposedly on MSNBC to discuss is, of course, months old and something that I critiqued months ago because of the arguments it advances about encouraging women to take up textile work in Middle Eastern countries as a way to expand economic opportunities for women; its willing ignorance of cultural factors at play; the lack of attention to overall unemployment in some oil rich countries as a result of the lack of economic diversification; and the fact that women have poor economic and political opportunities in oil-poor countries in the Middle East as well as oil-rich ones (as I noted above). That doesn't make it a bad study or one not worthy of discussion — it's worth plenty of discussion by people far more informed than Sally Quinn — but it's certainly no road map to resolving the issues of gender inequality in some Middle Eastern countries.

Related: Middle East Oil Reserves By Country and Rank [About.com]
Yemen [CIA World FactBook]
Oman [CIA World Factbook]
Gender-related Development Index [United Nations]
Gender Empowerment Measure [United Nations]

Earlier: Social Scientist Says Oil Makes Women Second-Class Citizens

MEGAN: You know what sucks most of all about this? Getting up at 7:50 am is being "late."

JASON: Ha. Yes. Central Time.

MEGAN: Or Mountain Time. Or just, I want to sleep in one. single. day. Anyway, so, Denver. Republicans. Palin. Opinions?

JASON: Well, in the first place with Palin, we can see two things. One, she's fantastically unqualified to be vice-president. Two, what she lacks in qualification she makes up for in sheer raw talent. So she has almost nothing to add to the McCain ticket, and, indeed, the returns will begin to diminish almost as soon as the lights go out tonight. But she has a bright future.

MEGAN: I mean, I was sitting there last night going, why is being a community organizer a bad thing? 4 years ago or 8 years ago, wasn't the GOP all into charitable works? Making up for smaller government through private charity? How does that service to one's community, like, not count? Why was it boo-able?

JASON: I'm quite sure that Pat Buchanan was savagely beating himself off last night. He was back in his hotel room, moaning, "I'm like Ernest Borgnine! I'MA LIVE FOREVAH!"

MEGAN: Wow, that was a mental image I didn't need this early in the day. Mostly because I've spent this week surrounded by Pat Buchanans. If I didn't need to vomit when I got up, I sure as shit do now.

JASON: Yeah, I poured a lake of hot fire all over the constant slagging of community organizers last night. I want to point out to the Jezebel readership that on September 11, McCain and Obama are scheduled to appear at a forum on community service and volunteerism. Call their organizers. Let em know what McCain thinks about them. What did you think of Palin? Are you feeling it? Ready to do some aerial wolf hunting?

MEGAN: I mean, the roars in the audience were wild, for real, like, I know I was in the press booth at Invesco and couldn't hear them that well, but the Republicans loved her. Also, in a way I couldn't see, apparently, staffers were trying to give Giuliani the hook when he started to run over and he ignored them, bumping the end of Palin's speech out of prime time. Way to ingratiate yourself, Rudy!

JASON: Yeah, they had to scrap a video montage that was supposed to introduce Palin. Rudy ran over, but the real culprit has to be these three days of substantial schedule changes. No one seems to know which way is up. It's strange, because this convention seems to have taken on the strange, improvisational aspect of the McCain campaign itself, where every morning is a new opportunity to reinvent the goddamned wheel. Yesterday, though, they had much better raw material. Rudy and Palin get the highest marks from me, for grilling up that caribou and serving it bloody. It was a night where even a shitty Romney speech played well, because of the wet, flappy fart that Lieberman laid down the night before. Frankly, I'd be stunned if McCain does as well tonight. I mean, the audience will be its fullest and will be generous with the clapter, but his arrival on the scene last night was sort of comical. Palin was probably thinking, "Hey! John McCain and stuff! We were sorta doing okay without you!"

MEGAN: Actually, Romney's speech played pretty well live, Lieberman or no Lieberman, it was the first really good speech I've seen him give. Much like Thompson, if he hadn't been so stiff and boring during the campaign, McCain might not being the nominee. But, really, I can disagree with its content, but Palin gave a great rabble-rousing, roof-raising speech last night. Not that it's going to shut anyone up about the scandals. And you should've seen the standing ovation and heard the live cheering when she introduced Bristol. It was a little ironically amusing to watching the hard-core GOPers applaud teenage motherhood.

JASON: Yeah. Last night, I saw Judith Nathan stand up and applaud the concept of the Palin's lasting marriage, and I thought, "Wow! That must be so WEIRD for her!"

MEGAN: Man, the shit you miss watching it live! I would've been dying! But, the thing I sort of wondered is whether she's ever going to talk about anything besides abortion and oil. Like, there are other issues in America today, right?

JASON: Well, McCain has only got so many issues! There's SURGE! And now "Drill, Baby, Drill!" (blame the inept Michael Steele for entering that attack-ad ready phrase into the lexicon) And uhm...what else...there's Paying Lip Service To The Environment. And earmark reform. After that, it is pretty much straight Bush/Cheney. The injection of abortion gets the base motivated, but I don't think Maverick's going to really hype that issue. Palin might, but significantly, the topic was never broached in her speech last night, either. Palin was like, "We're going to lay some pipe!" Which is pretty porny! The guy who comes to fix the White House's copy machines would be in for a real treat in the McCain-Palin White House! And then there'd by John and Cindy's Anger-Banging!

MEGAN: I mean, I was waiting during the policy portion of her speech for her to talk about something other than energy... and then she didn't.

JASON: There was a "policy portion?"

MEGAN: Oh, God, there are so many sex jokes to be made at the GOP convention, it's hard to even know where to begin. Well, the energy thing was the policy portion. I know that because I stopped paying attention and got a little bored. That's usually my clue.

JASON: Do you think Levi The Defiler (I'm flat stealing that term from a friend) got any ass last night? What was the post-Palin mood like. He was chomping that gum like a motherfucker up there on that stage!

MEGAN: The women around me in the press box agreed (prior to his arrival on stage) that he was pretty cute. And I'll bet Palin makes them stay in different rooms despite everything.

JASON: Dude was just an Alaskan redneck poonhound 48 hours ago. Now he's on the airport tarmac having the sacred union of his DNA and Bristol's ova consecrated by the Geezer King. That's a lot to absorb.

MEGAN: But, as for the mood, I'll bet a lot of Republican girls got laid last night, if they weren't clinging to their purity rings. People were super-jazzed after the speech, especially the men I chatted with. Luckily, it was concert night for the RNC, so between the Charlie Daniels Band and Daughtry, I wasn't obligated to talk to anyone. I did chat for a second with Matt Cooper, though.

JASON: And how was Matt Cooper? I guess?

MEGAN: He was nice, he didn't even mention that I didn't look as stupidly sunburned as when we were introduced at Invesco. Anyway, so, do you think Palin hurts or helps McCain? I think her nomination and the controversy — as Mike Huckabee said — served to solidify his nomination and jazz up the base. So it's a way better idea than Lieberman, who's still limper than John McCain's penis.

JASON: Well, Palin's going to help rile up the base, but I'm of the same mind as Mike Murphy — both his on-camera and accidentally caught on a live mike persona — in that this year may not be a "base" election. He said on Sunday that he'd rather have MORE voters this year than HAPPY voters. I think he's right! And I think Palin played really poorly with independent voters — who Obama's already made some significant gains in the polls with since the DNC — and if McCain doesn't offer something of substance besides DRILL WAR HERO ISN'T MY VEEP HOT TO TROT SURGE MY FRIENDS MAVERICK, he may not make any inroads there. Palin's had a big splash, but her ability to "help" McCain is going to be limited, because she's going in dry dock, won't be giving pressers from what I hear, and sooner or later, it's going to get back to Obama and McCain.

MEGAN: How ironic would it be if after all this talk of how mean and sexist we all are, they stick her in a closet until the VP debate?

MEGAN: Hey, there, what's up?
MOE: I'm getting coffee. I'll be online in 5. I really feel like its the seventies today. Even the good news on the front of the Times about the natural gas in Louisiana is kind of dark.
MEGAN: Sure, no worries
MOE: Well the good news is that former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle is in on some Kurdish oil deal. That is bound to make him a lot of money and he sure deserves it having had the foresight to liberate The Iraq and also suck up to Bill Clinton's friend that dictator guy across the border in Kazakhstan, even as Seymour Hersh and his cabal of elite treason-loving freedom haters were knocking that for being a "conflict of interest" or whatever. Thanks to Wikipedia, we know Richard Perle explained back in 2003 that Sy Hersh was basically a terrorist, so we probably don't need to spend much more time on his smears. Especially with such other positive energy deals in the works as this one that is making everyone in De Soto Parish, Louisiana, suddenly a card carrying Cadillac owning rich person! And that makes 1 place GM might make a profit this year.
MEGAN: Well, unless they bought it outright, I'd say GMAC bought a bunch of Caddies more than people in DeSoto did, but no matter.
By the way, Bush has signed off on the first military execution since 1961. It's also the first actively-pursued execution since then. Can we all take a moment to be unsurprised that the soon-to-be executed man is black?
MOE: There are six other men on military death row. Are you saying that's why he got to go first? Incidentally, I never thought much about the death penalty before The Idiot wherein the lead character is this charismatic Christ figure named Mishkin, which happens to be the name of the retiring Federal Reserve board governor who apparently wants to set inflation targets, something I don't have much of an opinion on today, although I read somewhere else that only about a third of jobless are receiving unemployment benefits these days, down from 44% in 2001 and 52% when all "social safety net" stuff was actually taken seriously, before the breakdown of the family made us all stupid and neighbors started locking their doors at night and buying homes in ever farther-flung suburbs, a trend no one thought would ever ever end but boy were they wrong, but hey, on the bright side, it's a good thing we didn't turn out Berlin, right? All opera and free education and cheap rent and richly endowed cultural institutions and SO LITTLE GDP GROWTH??? Anyway, we were supposed to "weigh in" on that Tennessee guy. Um, he sucks is my opinion.
Because all the drawbacks of breakneck economic growth are so easily reversible! Oh wait.
MEGAN: Yeah, I'm sort of all like, meh, whatever, another crazy person went on another crazy shooting and we're supposed to go, ohhhh, it's because he hated liberals? Well, maybe he just hated Unitarians, it's not like he went to the local Democratic Party offices. Why would anyone expect that the guy's homicidal/suicidal rantings would make sense? It was like 4 pages long. I haven't written a letter that long since my best friend in junior high moved to Canada, not even the one time that I got a letter from a guy I'd been dating in college 3 weeks after the school year ended telling me what a stupid, slutty, vicious cunt I was but that he was only writing to make sure that he hadn't knocked me up so then he really wouldn't have to have speak to me again. God, damn, I wonder if I still have that letter somewhere. Anyway, even he didn't merit a 4 page reply. But God knows what Mr. Crazypants in Tennessee will write when he learns GOP hero Dan Quayle is about to turn Mr. Fancypants and is in talks to join Dancing With the Stars.
MOE: Yeah, oh god, Dan Quayle, it's the nineties again all right. Except insofar as the pollution in China is hella worse.
MEGAN: They're even still defending their human rights record. Seems like it would've been easier to try harder not to be human-rights violators in the last 20 years or whatever, but whatever.
MOE: Pitchfork crapsters: previous link contains JARVIS COCKER, J MASCIS, SEBADOH, LIZ PHAIR, BUILT TO SPILL, MISSION OF BURMA annnnnnnd Flava Flav, referencing his popular reality TV show! To get us back on the Dan Quayle angle. Lou Barlow does not sound like he held up too well, but we'll forgive him because his cover of Ratt's "Round And Round" was such a sparkling contribution to the culture. Okay, and also, pollution. because it's kind of a really good story with implications for the whole next century.

Shougang Steel Group, the giant steelmaker whose name translates as "Capital Steel," was ordered to relocate most of its operations hundreds of miles away to a partly manmade island. Xiang Dong, who worked at the company for 16 years, says he cried when his unit was shut down on March 31. Most of his 600 or so colleagues were transferred to the new facility. "Of course I was sad. A lot of coworkers cried when it stopped," says Mr. Xiang, who continues to work as a caretaker at the mothballed production line. "But this is for the Olympic dream. We do some sacrifices for that."

MEGAN: Speaking of human rights records, did you know the American Medical Association didn't support the 1964 Civil Rights Act? That they deliberately shut down black medical colleges, understaffed black hospitals while forcing the segregation issues, allowed affiliates to keep black doctors out and are only just now apologizing? Because I didn't.
MOE: Oh God, I looked at that story and had no idea what it was about, other than I didn't feel like I needed another reason to disrespect doctors this week. Holy shit.
MEGAN: Ahem. I'm feeling a little disrespectful to the medical establishment this morning, though, but I will change the subject before I rage out for the 2nd time in as many days and so we can talk about the Doha talks in which they're still debating the same fucking issues they did 2 years ago when I got my writing start authoring a "humorous" round-up of the week's events in the WTO negotiations. No, for real.
MOE: Oh, great last graf:

Consider this statistic: In 1910, when Abraham Flexner published his report on medical education, African-Americans made up 2.5 percent of the number of physicians in the United States. Today, they make up 2.2 percent.

MEGAN: Yeah, that was the best kicker I'd read all day.
MOE: Anyway, I have to go sort of. But the buzz today is Obama closing in maybe on Tim Kaine for VP. Do you think Obama could win your state? Maybe I could go home and vote there since Philly seems to have forgotten I existed. Garry Kasparov thinks O needs to go hard on Russia, not a shock, the Ataturk Thought Association is worried the country is turning into Iran following a raid on their headquarters. And I'm still hung up on China, because at some point the world needs to figure out how to make the whole green collar jobs thing work, and just to spite the fucking Republicans I hope they do it in Berlin.
MEGAN: One of my friends just took a green collar job! He mostly took it, though as a third job because his former employer outsourced a bunch of their work and his second job as a tattoo apprentice doesn't pay the bills either so now he's working at a recycling plant. He says he doesn't feel very green except on the really hot days and then he does, but only around the gills.
As for Virginia, polls show it's tight, so who knows. The Washington Post keeps running stories I'm too lazy to find at the moment that Obama's operation in the state just keeps expanding and expanding so maybe? I don't think Kerry was within a point or two of Bush, like, ever in 2004.

MOE: Okay, first of all, re the companies chosen for those coveted Iraq oil contracts of course they did, some people are complete idiots, Paul Krugman thinks Obama needs to be more like Reagan than Clinton…so what's Obama doing here??



MEGAN: On the first story, gotta love this quote:

The advisers — who, along with the diplomatic official, spoke on condition of anonymity — say that their involvement was only to help an understaffed Iraqi ministry with technical and legal details of the contracts and that they in no way helped choose which companies got the deals.

I mean, does anyone actually believe that?



MOE: Also I don't know if you've been reading about this book but it's been eliciting some really surprising rarely-articulated viewpoints from pundits such as:

The people who fund and run the GOP are simply too committed to the idea of cutting taxes for affluent people and reducing government spending… In fact, even saying the GOP estabilshment is "committed" to these things understates the grip of economic libertarianism over the party. It suggests a worldview that's the product of some reflection, when in fact the economic libertarianism of big GOP donors is mostly an expression of their self-interest

And in case you didn't catch what he was trying to say there:

—i.e., they want to keep their own taxes low.

MEGAN: As for McCain's record, not to bash on John Aravosis whose work I normally like, but Jeffrey Klein did that story way better, like two weeks ago without going into the gutter at all.



Well, the problem with Noam Scheiber's analysis in that review is that he repeats the claptrap that the GOP is ostensibly committed to reducing government spending, which is utter bullshit.

Let's bust that myth people. They are committed to saying they want to reduce government spending, and committed to spending more of it in ways that appeal to them ideologically (i.e., defense, abstinence education, marriage-promotion) or appeal to their constituents (i.e., earmarks)

MOE: Okay here's the thing:

The authors say they blew their chances to capitalize on their opening to these voters “by confusing being pro-market with being pro-business, by failing to distinguish between spending that fosters dependency and spending that fosters independence and upward mobility, and by shrinking from the admittedly difficult task of reforming the welfare state so that it serves the interests of the working class rather than the affluent.”

To "distinguish between spending that fosters dependency and spending that fosters independence and upward mobility" is, as near as I can figure, the opposite of "pro-market."

MEGAN: Yes, I would agree with that completely. Of course, apparently, "spending that fosters independence and upward mobility is — surprise! — serendipitously spending on things like marriage promotion and putting more black people in jail and abstinence education!

Douthat and Salam say to the contrary that the social issues are a major part of working-class insecurity. “Safe streets, successful marriages, cultural solidarity and vibrant religious and civic institutions make working-class Americans more likely to be wealthy, healthy and upwardly mobile. Public disorder, family disintegration, cultural fragmentation and civic and religious disaffection, on the other hand, breed downward mobility and financial strain — which in turn breeds further social dislocation, in a vicious cycle that threatens to transform a working class into an underclass."

Great, so, the government is now going to be able to solve the problems of family disintegration by.... making divorce harder? Making marriage necessary for all pregnant women? They're going to solve religious disaffection by... making religion mandatory? And, God knows the Democrats love them some public disorder. Yum, goes perfectly in my coffee.

MOE: The thing that is so dreamy about talking about this stuff as a failure to distinguish between the different kinds of "spending" is that it really cuts to the heart of the issue that, as some guy points out on today's WSJ edit page OF ALL PLACES…numbers lie!

MEGAN: Whoa, seriously, someone spiked the coffee with LSD at the WSJ this weekend:

there is no such thing as "the economy."

MOE: The first Harper's reading last month said this a lot better, but I'm not sure where it is online. Maybe I'll just screengrab it here.

Dammit, it doesn't want to let me, oh well.

MEGAN: Although, back to the intersection of economics and politics, I spent hours yesterday obsessed with the implications of this chart. Which goes with this article but the article's less interesting and not just because I like pretty pictures.

MOE: Oh here it is. Anyway we forgot to discuss < a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aftgJ3S0euEQ&refer=home">Steven Hatfill, whose name is not Mohammed and therefore actually got some money out of his whole post-9/11 harassment, or we never did, because that happened on Friday and I was too tired out from Dimitri the Lover to do a proper news roundup, but hahaha he did well for himself. And Mallaby who I generally love has something on oil and speculation and whatnot.

And now I have to try to get on the internet bus

BRB as they say.

9 minutes

MOE: And I'm back! On the bus. But I'm still using the free Dupont wifi signal so I'm not sure if that's sustainable.

MEGAN: I think it kicks in on the bus pretty soon, but we can totally hurry up.

Anyway, what's fascinating about the chart I sent is about the redistribution of wealth in this country, from the Midwest to the Coasts (by and large) and the weirdness that Alaska and Hawai'i were two of the richest 12 states in 1976.

And about how the richest states — and by and large, the richest people — are increasingly turning to the Democratic party. Fucking elitists.

—-—-—16 minutes—-—

MOE: Hey

Do you read me?

MEGAN: Yup

MOE: The wifi server is allegedly just getting reactivated

So I'm on bberry.

Anna is going to kill me but. If this works it isn't a bad thing. Free wifi in DuPont is good!

MEGAN: No problem! I got grabbed coffee and a yogurt and plugged my computer back in as I was previously sitting on the front porch watching my neighbor playing with his baby and the cats of the 'hood stare at me

Anyway, the wifi bus worked fine for me the one round trip I took it. I, um, spent most of the time IM'ing with people.

MOE: So Cass Sunstein co authors an oped in the Wash Post... Cass sunstein is the Obama policy adviser yes? It doesn't mention that. But anyway it is about the death penalty. I wanted to bring up Juan Williams admirably

MEGAN: Juan Williams?

Also, Cass Sunstein, I'm not sure if he's an adviser but he's definitely a fan

MOE: Frustrated performance on fox news Sunday re the supreme courts striking down the gun ban

MEGAN: Sadly, I have no cable but I will find a clip.

I mean, my parents have no cable because my mother doesn't believe in it.

MOE: Maybe I can find a clip. What he lacked in eloquence he made up for in abject what the fuckitide

My dad and I talked about whether murder is the worst crime. He believes in the death penalty for people who cut off peoples legs and gouge their eyes out and such.

MEGAN: On the other hand, I think blind people and amputees would probably disagree, right?

MOE: If I can't get wifi on this bus I'm going to make them drop me off on the side of the 295

MEGAN: As though there's wifi along 295?

MOE: Well if you had your arms and legs cut off and your eyes gouged out by some crazy child rapist you might feel like giving that guy the lethal injection, I dunno,

MEGAN: But is it worse than murder? Would I rather be dead than mutilated? I guess I already made the decision a long time ago that I'd rather be a living sexual assault victim than a dead one. So I guess that makes murder worse.

It's kind of a subjective question

MOE: Yeah anyway sunstein mostly discusses the evidence or lack thereof for and against the concept that the death penalty is a deterrent which is sort of the same question...

MEGAN: For the death penalty to be a deterrent, people would have to believe sincerely that the likelihood is that they will get caught.

MEGAN: Most people aren't weighing the consequences of their actions or thinking that far ahead, frankly.

MOE: I wonder what the penalty for advertising internet access on your bus service and failing to deliver is...

MEGAN: Ok, that's totally a capital offense.



MOE: Lol I just passed the capitol.

MOE: I guess we have to talk about campaign finance today. But first I'd like to draw the readers' attention to this handy guide to why you can't really blame the war for the crap economy, despite what Stiglitz says, and even Stiglitz says the war has only added like $5 or $10 to the price of oil, but basically the point is that every globalization has its discontents and our objectivist malcontents didn't pay attention to that when they were setting policy so now we have more discontents over here while some folks in India and China are starting to enjoy better lives/deeper carbon footprints. ANYHOW
MEGAN: Prosperity brings global warming hooray! But only the rich can afford to reduce their carbon footprints. And I always find it difficult to believe that people really think that the war brings the bad economy when war generally makes the economy better. It was one of the reasons Hitler and WWII were initially so popular in Germany — taking shit over improved the economy almost immediately. War spending did its part for ending the Great Depression, etc.

MOE: Well yeah but as Stiglitz pointed out in 2003 Iraq was hardly "total war" and the economic benefits were thus hardly going to be evenly spread around. And as this report points out tax cuts, airline bailouts and No Child Left Behind played their early part in deficit spending. Oh man there are really cute dogs on my Fox News right now. Oh how sweet and all their owners have swaddled them in American flags and "freedom"-themed accessories!
MEGAN: Do they have freedom-themed leashes?

MEGAN: Yeah, I mean, while Bush was cutting taxes he was also presiding over the largest expansion in government history. I was at a speech by Andy Card in 2005, I think, and he went through all these verbal gymnastics to deny that the Administration had expanded the government which made the ambassador from an unnamed country next to whom I was seated marvel at his stones. It basically required that he exempt from consideration the Defense Department or DHS, which are (naturally) where all the increases have been, so it was absurdist in its brilliance. Sort of like if you don't want to be quoted, just curse every other word.
MOE: Hey, speaking of the defense budget is Israel trying to save us some money by just bombing Iran for us? Because that's awfully generous, considering all those fears we are about to elect that Muslim Marxist guy to lead the country and who knows what that means for the Jews…
MEGAN: Well, I mean, we are a leetle busy right now, I think we thought we'd be done enough in Iraq (the same way we're, like, totally Mission Accomplished in Afghanistan) that we could've started bombing Iran on our own.

MEGAN: Anyway, so, campaign finance?
MOE: Oh right, that's not my issue. And I must admit, I was occupied with this crazy Botox bandit story…and also vaguely transfixed by some story they're running on Fox now about some woman who lit up on an airplane, and in her mugshot she just looks kind of drunk or high so it kind of makes sense that she would do that, especially with fares so high these days you'd think you could do whatever you damn well please — ha! On my Virgin flight they wouldn't even let me use the blanket during takeoff, which was insane — and anyway, oh yes, Obama. We should talk about this. I guess it's disappointing but not surprising? I dunno

MEGAN: Well, but they all opted out of public financing for the primary and there were rumors McCain was going to for the general. Plus, I mean, it restricts him to $85 million which is maybe one of the reasons that, you know, Democrats don't go to states they "can't" win and ditto with Republicans and so everyone fights for Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida and concedes the others to one another.

MOE: I will say that even if it is blatantly hypocritical it also appeals to that side that worries about his ability to play dirty/be pragmatic/blahblah. Which seemed to be a big concern of Clintonites.
MEGAN: Oh, sure. I mean, I think the real issue is that 99% of Americans probably don't know anything about the public financing system so they whole OH MY GOD WHAT HAS HE DONE thing is probably right over their heads.
MEGAN: Which is why it's smart, release the video, let the talking heads pontificate for 24 hours just before the weekend, then release a new ad and start airing it in red states and let them think about that.

MEGAN: But, also, I think he makes an interesting point. Public financing comes from the $3 check-off on your tax return, so it's like small donations from small people funneled through the government. He's got 1.5 million donors, half of which are small-amount donors. He's practically creating his own public financing system, it's just one in which there are no limits on what he can spend after the convention.
MEGAN: Which is an interesting thing, actually. The party that has the Presidency gets the last convention, which means that the party without it gets a week or more where they are hamstrung by the public financing limits and hte incumbent party is not. In 2004, it was a full two weeks because the Dems went before the Olympics, then the Olympics and then the Republicans went and Bush became subject to the spending limits.
MOE: Hey check this out we're using one percent less gas than last year! And this is unrelated but here's a pleasant photo of a highway in Beijing, where starting July 20 they will also be using less gas, for obvious reasons. Okay, now I'm headed to Peggy and Brooks. Krauthammer and Krugman both wrote today about McCain's offshore drilling blah blah, one of them is for it and one of them is against it I'll let you guess who!

MEGAN: Gosh, so hard! Also, by the way, the DC metro system had 2 top-10 ridership days this week alone, and they're blaming it on gas prices.
MOE: David Brooks likens Obama to Mr. Rogers playing Ari on Entourage. (Would that be good for the Jews?) Anyway, he proceeds to do exactly the thing I was talking about where Obama actually gets praised for "selling out" in a move that should disappoint his starry-eyed media fans but actually makes them cream their pants because they are ashamed of their idealism and also, masochists:

MOE:

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

MEGAN: I think it's funny that Clinton supporters either think he's the worst of the Chicago political machine or a naive waif and never anything in between.
MOE: Although uh Noonan isn't feeling the sentimentality shame so much today:

In a way, the world is a great liar. It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn't. It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn't, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better.

MEGAN: Yeah, she was on Scarborough this morning and they all got maudlin about Tim Russert.
MOE:

That's what we talk about in eulogies, because that's what's important. We don't say, "The thing about Joe was he was rich."

MEGAN: Also, her site is down.

MEGAN: Off-topic, our friend Calderone has the story of the wacky Hardball ad about Michelle's supposed make over and an even funnier fake one for Cindy McCain.
MEGAN: I also think the whole thing is funny, like Michelle needs a fashion makeover? The figures aren't dancing ladies in the Obama ad as much as fake runway models
MOE: I hate sentences like that. How many eulogies have any sort of basis in the reality of someone's life? I went to a very rich guy's funeral once. All the eulogies were like "great guy worked hard loved the outdoors cared about his family" and meanwhile half the family is sitting there seething over what a cold unemotional terror he'd been. But yeah, I dunno. Anyway I failed to mention that the Bush Administration's spying on Americans thing may, like the shitty economy and the shady no-bid multibillion dollar overbudget defense contracts and chaos/anarchy/fear in Iraq, get to outlive the Administration.

MEGAN: I also love that the Dems rolled over on retroactive immunity for telecoms as part of it, giving just enough judicial oversight to make it look like there will be some if we aren't paying attention, but little enough that it will make any difference to the telecoms.

MEGAN: So what did you miss most about the States besides good burgers? I was shocked in Europe in 1998 when I got served a horsemeat hamburger.
MOE: Well annoyingly I missed that you already covered the story of the rush to buy ships to drill for oil in the News Roundup, which is an interesting tale of the insatiable demand for deep-sea rigs, which cost half a billion dollars apiece, not that that's that's a big deal when, you know, just by way of example, Exxon's earnings before interest/taxes/depreciation/amortizaiton for the past 12 months (during which oil futures have probably averaged half today's price) was $77 billion…
MEGAN: And, hey, if we built them here (ha!) it could revitalize the dying shipbuilding industry.

MOE: South Korean shipyards are making most of these things, incidentally. Didn't we used to have shipyards in this country? I feel like they've all been turned into luxury condo developments and office parks. Where are the world's cruise ships and container ships built?

MEGAN: I think the only thing our few remaining shipyards build are navy vessels. I'm sure the cruise and container ships are all built in low-wage, non-union countries.
MOE: Yeah but that doesn't really describe South Korea and it definitely doesn't describe Singapore.
MEGAN: I have two words that do, though: industrial subsidies.
MOE: Hahaha yes and its evil cousin INDUSTRIAL POLICY.
MEGAN: We have an industrial policy! It's called reducing the capital gains tax! And R&D tax credits.

MEGAN: Well, we could discuss this article in which a former DeLay staffer bothers to notice that Republicans are losing in moderate states by being too Christian conservative and not Republican enough, and rejects calls for the party to get more conservative and praises Rahm Emanuel.
MEGAN: So, he's making friends.

MOE: Is it possible to be in an industry that manufactures single products that weigh thousands of tons, provide the backbone of billions of dollars of global commerce, are giant combustible moving targets for terrorism and pirates and cost $500 million apiece and are generally ordered in eleven or twelve figure (often government) contracts…and not involve the government? No. And you know, shipping isn't going anywhere and shipbuilding = jobs. So why does it seem like the EU and the US just, like, gave that industry to Asia while they took the aerospace stuff? Admittedly I don't fucking know anything.
9:10 AM
MEGAN: I think the margins aren't that great, subsidies aren't passing muster with the WTO and we'd rather spend our government money on bombs and guns than big ass ships.
MOE: See, that is just our problem. The "the margins aren't that great" problem. Well, guess what, Samsung Heavy just raised prices $100 million, so 25%, and they know they could charge more. So the margins are pretty damn good now, because you're not just going to see someone open a competing shipyard specializing in deep-sea vessels down in Bangalore. Beyond that, with all the government intervention, the opaque accounting of the contracts involved, blah blah blah, the margins can seem almost impossible to calculate. Whatever, "the margins aren't that great" is just code for "it's hard." It's hard because the capital expenditures are huge, the labor costs are huge, and the price of fucking up is huge. But the thing about those cyclical industries we're always trying to get out of: for all those reasons the jobs aren't going anywhere.

MEGAN: I don't know that it's just capital intensivity, though. We have plenty of capital intensive industries in this country (like: heavy equipment manufacturing, for whom I used to lobby) that has survived despite it being cyclical and all the rest. I'm going to guess that the reason military shipbuilding has survived while commercial hasn't is partially because the margins on the military contracts are better.
MOE: Hahaha today on Fox they're trying to get everyone to back down from the accepted conventional wisdom that lifting the ban on offshore drilling would take 7 years to have an impact by finding some nutjob who claims it will only take 2. Since so much sentiment is packed into oil prices I suppose he could be right, but then we'd be willing that the markets are somewhat irrational or something?
MOE: Oh god now they're talking about the laxative cake.
MEGAN: I mean, it would take that long to have an impact on supply, not that I think supply is the problem or that drilling offshore would have a huge impact on it. But I'm sure the markets would get all irrationally exuberant about it and prices would dip briefly and then continue on their steady upward path.
MOE: Ah, Obama opted out of public financing.
MEGAN: Because the system is broken! And he has lots of money.
MOE: I love how all the people behind this inane Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less campaign are citing polling data that tells us 64% of Americans "Expect It Will Lower Prices." I wonder what those 64% of Americans thought invading Iraq would do! Besides destroy Al Qaeda which was financed by Saddam Hussein who was the half-brother of Barack Hussein Obama's Indonesian father?? Speaking of which, Iraq oil contracts…did you read that story?

MEGAN: 64% of Americans expect it will lower prices because the news media keeps repeating the fact that John McCain and George Bush want to do it to lower prices.
MEGAN: I didn't read the Iraq oil contracts story but, let me guess... corruption?
MOE: Well, the winners of the "unusual" no-bid contracts were Exxon, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron, who won out over some 40 companies including Chinese and Russian ones, and while they only last a year they give those companies a head start international observers are headscratching etc. etc.

It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

MOE: Here the Iraq is calling it a "stop-gap measure" just to get people in and digging etc. etc.
MEGAN: Right. Because what Iraq needs is obviously more US and European-based multinationals exploring for oil that everyone knows is there. Talk about capital intensive industries.
MEGAN: Once they're in there, they'll stay and everyone knows it.
MOE: And all but Chevron were original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company so it's really like a Restoration of sorts!
MEGAN: Aw, how sweet, it's like a family reunion! Only with more money!
MOE: Holy shit two Bear Stearns executives were just arrested at their homes for…knowingly bilking some investors out of $1.6 billion

MEGAN: Wow, the government cares about that now? Also, by the way, Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) hs called for the nationalization of U.S. oil refineries.
MOE: Right I'm reading about that. The "Drill Here Drill Now Pay Less" of the Left is apparently some outfit called Oil Change International, or at least they're spinning it that way. Remember that Crappy Hour a few glorious months back when we actually read long stories where we discussed the pros and cons of the global shift toward the nationalization of oil? Yeah I don't really remember either.
MEGAN: Do I remember Crappy Hour yesterday?

MEGAN: Hey, do you remember when we were all shocked that the Air Force mistakenly sent nuclear components instead of batteries to Taiwan? Well, it turns out that they're actually missing like 1,000 sensitive nuclear parts and that's why the dudes got fired. Hopefully we didn't ship those to, like, China or something.
MOE: That reminds me there was something in the paper about Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou's new China policy which isn't really a new policy, it's just more like an attitude, because Ma is "mainland Chinese" meaning his first language is Mandarin and he came over with Chiang Kai-shek and the last president was a "native Taiwanese" meaning his first language was Hokkien and for most of his adult lifetime he was one of the majority of the population who had Japanese colony nostalgia (this nostalgia did not go over well with the mainland Chinese) .. anyhow but see, we're missing the real meme here, which is Larry Sinclair at the National Press Club.
MEGAN: I sooooo wanted to go, but I had to blog yesterday.
MEGAN: By the way, the HuffPo story on it is even more epic.

MEGAN: I love, too, that they get Clinton supporters on the record being all like, well, the crazy guy might be telling the truth, he really could've sucked Obama's dick.
MOE:

And pay Sinclair did — for the venue and its microphone, as well as for a kilted lawyer (with a suspended license) named Montgomery Blair Sibley, who informed those assembled that his preferences in dress were arrived at as a way to secure comfort for his unusually large sexual organs. "I don't know why men wear pants," he said with a poker face. "It's a function of male genitalia. If you're size normal or smaller, you're probably comfortable with [pants]. ... Those at the other end of the spectrum find them quite confining."
"I asked him to wear a suit and tie," Mr. Sinclair said ruefully. Then, he admitted to suffering from a brain tumor.

MOE: What?
MEGAN: I know, how sad are you that we weren't there? By the way, Sibley was the DC Madam's lawyer and is somehow connected to Larry Flynt and Sinclair was hinting around that he was going to have a special surprise guest so the media showed because they thought Larry Flynt would be there.

• Hillary Clinton won't wear Donna Karan anymore because it makes her look too well-dressed. Four words, Hillary: Nancy Pelosi is Speaker. [Times UK]
  
• Nader wants to to save half of your tax return and give him the other half so he can hopefully get McCain elected. Man, fuck that guy. [Boston Globe]
  
• It's okay, though, because oil is now $126 a barrel, a new record, so you'll just have to spend it on that anyway. [Washington Times]

• Staff Sgt. Louis Falcon spent months of his tour of Iraq trying to get a teenage Iraqi girl prosthetic legs. It made him feel so good he's, um, willing to do more tours there killing people. [LA Times]
• The Burmese junta is going to hold elections on time tomorrow, now that they've successfully resolved the humanitarian crisis of a CNN reporter reporting on the cyclone and the resulting death and destruction they don't really give a shit about doing anything about. [Washington Times, CNN]
• But they're in "good" company in their apathy, since OPEC only gave $1.5 million to the World Food Programme this year, dwarfing the only member donation from the UAE of $50,000. The U.S., by comparison, has given $362.7 million so far this year and pledged $250 million to the WFP. [Fox News]
• But, hey, the oil industry's got plenty of money for a charm campaign. They're taking bloggers to oil platforms! Everyone will learn to love high gas prices once bloggers explain to them the nuances of oil prices and why oil companies deserve billion-dollar profit margins. [Washington Post]
• Schadenfreude alert: Al Sharpton owes $1.5 million in back taxes and penalties. Someone's gotta pay for those suits. [Associated Press]
• Obama has surpassed Clinton in the race for superdelegates this afternoon. Not a good Friday at Hillary HQ. [NY Times]
• Which probably explains the anti-Obama e-mail campaign Hillary supporters have started, much to the chagrin of uncommitted superdelegates. Really, people? McCain is better than a Democratic Presidency? Maybe you're the ones who should move to Canada. [Huffington Post]
• I've already had a drink but, like this judge, I could really use a foot massage. I'd rather not have to order an underling to do it, though. Yay equality, bringing sexual harassment to both sexes. [CNN]
• Crap, I was supposed to find a happy story. Um, the trade deficit is down because our economy sucks! But, the trade deficit's down! [NY Times]

Ross's argument, as encapsulated by Lynn Harris at Broadsheet, is that an oil-based economy ends up reducing the opportunities for women to participate in an export-oriented economy (neatly ignoring, by the way, that oil is an export product) which has historically been the best way by which women can achieve a level of "equality." In effect, Ross argues that women working with other women in textile factories and other labor-intensive industrial jobs that can be moved by a company on a whim, often begin to recognize that they ought to have both rights and a voice in the political system. Not so in an oil-based economy, commonly found in Middle East.

Since Ross' piece is 50 pages, I'll summarize my objections here:

• If you can name a lot of other countries in the Middle East where women are in the same economic and cultural situation as the women in oil-rich countries, and Ross can and does, then it's probably not the oil at the root of it.
  
• It's not just women in oil-producing countries that lack employment opportunities, it's men too. The fact that unemployment overall is so rampant is a problem for women breaking in, certainly, but it's also a long-term stability problem that everyone recognizes because there are relatively high education levels, a plethora of low-skilled jobs (for which many oil-rich Middle Eastern countries import foreign workers), a dearth of high-skilled jobs and a ton of money spent to improve people's quality of life which makes them realize how crappy everything else is and gives them little else to do but agitate.
  
• There are serious religious and cultural mores that would lead these countries to strongly encourage women to stay in traditional roles. To ignore those is to put some serious academic blinders on to make a larger point.
  
• While textiles is a traditional way for women to initially gain entry into the work force, it is so because textile work is traditionally very low-cost, price-inelastic, labor-intensive work. On the other hand, in many tertiary economies (like the United States), non-tradeable work — or work that can't be outsourced — is quite often done by women. See: education, health care, legal services, many call centers, retail work, etc. This is the very work that Ross argues women in oil-rich Middle Eastern countries won't or can't get. In wealthy economies like the oil-rich ones in the Middle East, it boggles the mind that the "solution" to the patriarchy would be to have the women take the most menial work known the world over instead of participate in those parts of the economy in which the rest of us find ourselves participating every day.

Oil, Islam, and Women [UCLA Department of Political Science]
"Petroleum perpetuates patriarchy" [Broadsheet at Salon.com]