[Allentown, Pennsylvania; December 4. Image via Getty]

US President Barack Obama greets a baby as he arrives to deliver remarks on the economy at Lehigh Carbon Community College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on December 4, 2009 as he kicks off his 'White House to Main Street Tour' that will take him to cities and towns across the country over the next couple months. AFP PHOTO/Nicholas KAMM (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

[Lebanon, Pennsylvania; August 11. Image via Getty]

LEBANON, PA - AUGUST 11: Katy Abram of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, holds a sign as she waits in line to attend a town hall meeting held by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter August 11, 2009 in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Specter held the town hall meeting to speak about health care reform. (Photo by Chris Gardner/Getty Images)

Update: It gets better: Katy just turned up on MSNBC!

Colorado
After reports surfaced that Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman had purged tens of thousands of voters from the rolls in Colorado within the sacrosanct 90-day time period in which purges are illegal, he was sued to add the voters back in. This week, a federal court forced Coffman to not only add those voters back onto the rolls, but to grant their provisional ballots special status. When one of the purged voters files a ballot, the state has to actively prove that they don't qualify to vote or else count the ballot.

Florida
The grandmother of voter suppression efforts by the GOP, early voters are turning out in record numbers here, too, hoping to avoid a repeat of the 2000 election. Most of them say they're hoping that if their votes get screwed up, voting early will give them time to fix things. Of course, machine breakdowns and ID-verification ended up slowing the process down, which means that early voters have hurried up to stand in line anyway. Despite GOP concerns that early voting could cost them the election, Republican Governor Charlie Crist ordered early voting locations to stay open longer to accommodate the unexpected surge.

Georgia
In a state seeing unprecedented voter turnout, particularly in African-American communities, and with scores of people voting early (as much as 40 percent of the total 2004 turnout), it's worth nothing that the Republican Secretary of State, Karen Handel, "flagged" as many as 55,000 Georgia voters for additional review prior to the election. While the courts told her to notify the 4,500 flagged for citizenship review that they were eligible to vote, there's no word on the other 50,000 people she's trying to kick off.

Michigan
Michigan has a system that sends newly registered voters cards to confirm their registration. Since 2006, about 5,000 of those cards were returned as undeliverable, and the state threw those voters off the rolls with no other evidence. This week, a federal appeals court ordered the state to re-enroll those voters, insisting that the state law does not require the receipt of the notification card, so the state can't declare them not registered. Those (and other voters) can still face a request for proof of residency at the polls.

Ohio
Ohio, the biggest, swingiest state of them all, has also been a hotbed of voter purges, new registration and Republican activity this year. As mentioned before, Ohio Republicans attempted to force Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to throw people off the rolls and stop allowing voters who registered after the early voting period had started to vote; Brunner declined and the Supreme Court sided with her. Bush even tried to get the Department of Justice to weigh in on it, but AG Michael Mukasey decided he didn't want to end up a Gonzales-style legal outcast and declined. Nonetheless,most observers expect that Ohio will be the biggest clusterfuck of this election season (possibly even surpassing Florida in 2000), full of legal challenges, fraud allegations, suppression allegations and general stupid political shit that has nothing to do with anything. Should be fun.

Pennsylvania
The state of Pennsylvania went to court to argue that it didn't need to provide voters with paper ballots — despite all this talk of record turn-out — unless all of the machines in a polling place fail. Judge Harvey Bartle ruled that if half of the machines in a polling place break, the state has to provide paper ballots to voters. The state decided against appealing the decision, apparently realizing that forcing voters to stand in long lines to all use one functioning machine is probably not the best plan.

Virginia
The Virginia NAACP filed a lawsuit against Democratic Governor Tim Kaine this week, alleging that the state was failing to provide enough voting machines at minority voting places and asking the judge to force them to try to keep wait times to 45 minutes. They withdrew their request for a temporary injunction yesterday after negotiations with Kaine's administration, but the lawsuit remains active. People trying to take advantage of in-person absentee voting in Northern Virginia locations like Arlington have had to wait as long as 90 minutes this week. Worse yet, an anonymous group has been distributing flyers in Democratic precincts intended to convince voters that the day for Democrats to vote in November 5th.

West Virginia
After numerous complaints from voters that touch screens were flipping their votes for McCain, Jeff Waybright, the Jackson County clerk, attempted to explain away the errors and improperly calibrated machines. He demonstrated how it might look that way when a machine was improperly calibrated, and then calibrated the machine. It promptly failed to do what it was supposed to. So, if you live in West Virginia, review your votes carefully and take your paper record.

Voter Registration Smashes Records [MSNBC]
Concern Mounts Over Expected Voting Surge [CBS]
Some Voters Still Waiting On Absentee Ballots [CNN]
Colorado Agrees to Restore Voters to Rolls [NY Times]
How Early Voting Could Cost McCain Florida [Time]
Gov. Crist Extends Early Voting Hours statewide [Miami Herald]
Black Voters May Lead Democratic Wave [Salon]
Thousands Of Flagged Voters Can Vote, Court Rules [CNN]
Michigan Loses Appeal Over Voters Rolls [MSNBC]
Ain't Like the Old Days [Talking Points Memo]
In Tight Race, Victor May Be Ohio Lawyers [NY Times]
Judge: PA Must Have Paper Ballots Ready If Half Of Machines Fail [CNN]
Va. NAACP Sues Virginia Governor Over Election Readiness [AP]
NAACP Drops Voting Lawsuit [Richmond Times-Dispatch]
Delays Abound in Early-Voting Surge; Predictions of High Turnout, Confusion [Wall Street Journal]
Phony Board Of Elections Flier Tells Virginia Democrats To Tote On November 5 [Think Progress]
West Virginia Vote Flipping Allegedly Caught On Tape [Huffington Post]

Earlier: There's Nothing Some Fear More Than Citizens Exercising Their Constitutional Rights
Voter Suppression And You: A Guide For Unreal Americans

• Not that it's surprising, but the 43 economists of the Economists' Policy Group on Women's Issues graded John McCain and Barack Obama on 10 issues of importance to women and Obama came out ahead. McCain got an "F" because the group was concerned that his positions would do harm to women. [US News & World Report]
• They probably didn't take into account, though, that the highest paid person on McCain's staff in October was a woman. She's, um, the woman that does Sarah Palin's make-up, and she got $22,800 for the first two weeks of work. [Huffington Post]
• Once upon a time before Ahmadenijad or Chavez came to power, McCain was casting votes in Congress to get the Reagan administration to sit down with an Mozambique group designated as a terrorist organization without preconditions. [Huffington Post]
• And long before Obama met Bill Ayers, McCain was palling around with Chilean dictator and human rights violator extraordinaire Augusto Pinochet and his pals. [Huffington Post]

• Speaking of domestic terrorists, people that bomb abortion clinics and assassinate doctors aren't, in Palin's Weltanschauung. For some reason, that sounded right-er in German. [Firedoglake]
• For those people keeping track of these sorts of things, Palin announced today that the McCain-Palin Administration would except disability programs from its spending freeze. So far, they're exempting defense spending, homeland security spending, veterans programs, science programs and disability programs. Kinda makes you wonder what they are actually going to reduce spending on. [Washington Post]
• Tom Ridge thinks that maybe John McCain would be doing better in Pennsylvania if he'd picked Tom Ridge as VP, but he totally supports Sarah Palin. Tom Ridge: not as blindingly stupid as one would assume if one watched his performance at Homeland Security Secretary. [CNN]
• In a stellar end of the week for the campaign, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, former Massachusetts Governor (and Republican) William Weld, former Minnesota Republican Governor Arne Carlson and current McCain adviser Charles Fried announced they were all voting for Obama. But they just did it because they're bla... Oh, wait, they're all white. I'm sure Rush Limbaugh will find another reason. [Christian Science Monitor, Talking Points Memo]
• The Republican Party in New Mexico has hired a private investigator to go around and harass elderly Latino voters and try to intimidate them from voting by threatening those completely legal citizens with deportation. [TPM Muckraker]
• In further Republican stupidity and assholery, noted asshole Michelle Bachmann has taped an ad apologizing for calling for the media to investigate anti-Americanism in Congress. Left out of the advertisement is the text of the legislation she'll introduce if re-elected to force Congress to conduct the investigation. [Politico]
• And Joe the Motherfucking Plumber is going to run for Congress in 2010, like anyone will give a fuck about him on November 5th. [The Hill]

• Sarah Palin is, like, so annoyed that Katie Couric, like, insisted on asking questions and talking about what she wanted to talk about instead of just letting Sarah bash Obama. Because that's how an "interview" works. To be fair, though, Palin had been on Fox News with Hannity first. [Huffington Post]
• She was also really sad when she read the papers this morning and found out that the campaign was pulling out of Michigan. They didn't tell her in advance that they were pulling out or that they don't care what she thinks about the Big Boy campaign stuff. [Politico]
• The United Steelworkers think he might be forced out of Pennsylvania, too. [Huffington Post]
• In the mean time, though, they've got an ad featuring a quote from a Famous Person. It turns out that person is Peggy Noonan, but it does make her look completely in the tank for McCain, not that anyone cares about anyone being in the tank for anyone other than Obama. [Washington Post]

• Now that California has seen how easy it is to get money from the government, they'd like $7 billion, please. [CNN]
• Now that the government owns Fannie Mae, you can stop foreclosure by simply shooting yourself. Easy! [CNN]
• President Bush already signed the bailout bill because actual fundamentals, like unemployment, of the economy continue to suck. [Washington Post, NY Times]
• Oh, and if you thought it laughable that Sarah Palin can claim to have foreign policy experience by virtue of the fact that she can "see" Russia from your backyard, McCain advisor Richard Fontaine claimed John McCain got some fucking that Brazilian model way back in the day. Angela Merkel promptly vowed to never take her eyes off him is he gets elected. That Bush back massage was bad enough.[The Miami Herald]

• The original terrorist — not the fist bumping kind — knows who he wants us to elect. Surprise! It's John McCain. [US News & World Report]
• That might be because he escaped us at least twice by going into Pakistan and because our troops weren't allowed to walk into Pakistan, and John McCain plans to continue that policy. [CBS News]
• And, like he plans to leave Pakistan alone, McCain's decided to leave Michigan alone, too. Guess they figured that they wouldn't be able to disenfranchise enough foreclosed-upon voters to eke out a win after all. [Washington Post]
• Since he's staying the course in Philly, though, voter intimidation tactics continue apace. [Philly.com]

• Because, if he doesn't, he's pretty well fucked in the electoral college. [Politico]
• Sort of like Sarah Palin's wrist supposedly is. Unless it's just a tactic to garner some sympathy, which it totally is. How many women around John McCain have to sport bum wrists before someone starts asking questions? [Politico]
• Barack and Michelle will celebrate their 16th wedding anniversary tomorrow with a quiet dinner that Barack requested the press pool leave them alone for. Fat chance, sucker. We want pictures, and so does Axelrod. [Huffington Post]
• Oh, hey, Bob Barr is still running! He thinks McCain is a hypocrite. Run, Bob, Run! [The Hill]
• Also, women find Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is a sexist hypocrite. [Pandagon]
• Wall Street Journal reporter Dorothy Rabinowitz thinks that overreaching surveillance by our government that is eroding our civil rights is totes okay with her because people died on September 11th. What's that saying? Those who would sacrifice freedom for security... [Washington Independent]

• Thomas Daley, a Pennsylvanian landlord, is accused of wiretapping and secretly recording footage of his female tenants in their apartments for 20 years. • According to a new studyconducted in conjunction with Clairol Nice n' Easy, women who dye their hair feel more confident. • UC Santa Barbara has created a graduate program that will offer a MA and a PhD in feminist studies, beginning in the fall 2009 semester. • A report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has found that self-harm among teen girls has risen by one-third in the past eight years and is more likely to cause hospitalization. • Sally Cluley will become England's youngest pilot this weekend when she receives her Private Pilots License on her 17th birthday on Sunday. • The FDA launched a crackdown today on eye wash and papain-based eye creams that are currently not approved by the FDA. • A lesbian soldier is seeking about $800,000 in compensation after a male officer in the Royal Artillery made sexual advances on her and then told to keep quiet by other unsympathetic officers.• A town in northern Italy joins a Tel Aviv suburb in using a DNA database to fine dog owners who don't scoop their dog's poop. • Ever wanted to tear someone a new asshole but found the job physically impossible? Now you can do it! • A radiation seed implant called ballon brachytherapy can shorten radiation treatment for breast cancer and will hopefully lead more women to seek out radiation therapy. • Morocco's top body of Islamic scholars have condemned a Muslim theologian's decree that girls as young as nine can marry. •

In an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Marybeth T. Hagan says that when she first heard about the transgender child, she exclaimed, "Where is the school? California?" (It seems that in Marybeth's world, transgender students are a product of new age methodology and organic produce.) Hagan, shocked to find out that this was occurring in her own backyard, objected to the way the situation was handled, because she feels that parents were not given enough advanced warning. "Introduction of sexual abuse prevention programs over the years should have taught these educators that most parents like to have a say in all aspects of their children's sexual education - particularly one that could be controversial," she reasons.

Other parents have spoken out harshly on the Haverford Township blog and eight parents called the principal to ask that their children not attend the transgender counseling session, according to the Inquirer. I have no doubt that the educators thought long and hard about how to present this issue to their students — according to reports, they consulted transgender experts, the student's family, and child psychologists. One parent, Valerie Huff, whose daughter is friends with the transgender student, thinks that the letter didn't need to go out in the first place, as "The kids don't make any big deal about it at all." It's not surprising in the least that 9-year-olds are being more open minded about differences than some of their parents.

School Challenge: Transgender Student Is Age 9 [Philadelphia Inquirer]
3rd-graders Asked To Help Classmate in Gender Change [World Net Daily]
School's Sensitivity Is Off-Target [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Earlier: Parents Of Transgender Boys Take Different, Provocative Paths
Controversial Treatment Allows Transgender Children To Delay Puberty

MEGAN: MSNBC has reliably informed me that we're in a recession, just not a technical recession.

MOE: Yeah the economy just doesn't isn't in the mood. I think it's cool though.
MOE: I was kind of sad that like 5 people seemed to get that parallel, which was really funny to me in my head., but marin79 made it all better.

MEGAN: But I wanted to sell my place! Or at least refinance my mortgage or something. But, hahaha, I'm a freelancer now so the banks don't care.
MEGAN: I got it! It was awesome.
MEGAN: So, have you shot your economics wad for the week then? We could talk about Cindy McCain instead and how, at this point, pretty much all the potential first spouses are better liked than the actual candidates. She seems, um, really cool.

MOE: Wow, thanks, I had not read that. And I didn't blow my wad. I'll read that while you read this, on how Merrill reacted when, in 2005, AIG stopped insuring the mortgage-backed securities they'd repackaged as collateralized debt obligations: they dove headfirst into the business of "insuring" those things themselves! All the executives who thought it was a bad idea were canned or demoted.

To oversee the job of taking CDOs onto Merrill's own books, the firm tapped Ranodeb Roy, a senior trader but one without much experience in mortgage securities. CDO holdings on Merrill's books were soon piling up at a rate of $5 billion to $6 billion per quarter. This led to an inside joke at Merrill. Mr. Roy is known as Ronnie. Some employees took to saying that if they couldn't find a specialized bond insurer, known as a "monoline," to take Merrill's risk on the deal, they could resort to a "Ronoline."

MOE: Hey, wow, that's a pretty interesting profile of Cindy. I like that she regrets the dig at Michelle. I like that she doesn't talk about her son in Iraq only because she fears crying in public. But the thing I like most about her is this:

"It's not about being a cowboy," she said during a series of interviews over the course of her four-day trip to Kosovo. "It's just these types of things don't necessarily happen in Phoenix, Ariz., and you have to go where it is."

Shawn Erfman lives in a trailer park, listens to Rush Limbaugh and voted for George W. Bush — twice. Over the weekend, he heard all about what Barack Obama had to say about "bitter" Pennsylvanians like himself. And he's mad as hell.

Not at the guy you might expect, though. "It's fucking true," he said Monday night. "Everybody's bitter for one reason or another. So they're crucifying him because he spoke the truth? Cause he's not saying something that's going to suck up to people and kiss ass? Because, what, he slipped and accidentally spoke the truth, instead of kissing butt?"

Sciandra said he understood what Obama meant, and wasn't offended by the idea that he "clings" to guns. "I hunt, I fish, I love the outdoors," he said. "Me, I tell you, I'm not worried about anybody taking my guns ... I think it just came out the wrong way." As for Erfman, he's more worried about healthcare than his job. His 60-year-old mother-in-law, Iona White, just moved in with his family so she could get onto their health insurance. A lifelong Democrat, White says she'll vote for Obama next week. "It's a bad time in the world," she said. "People are bitter."

MEGAN: I mean, I was having this conversation with Michael Calderone the other day. I grew up in a small town where the major employer is gone. There is a lot of bitterness, people do like their hunting and their religions and I'll be damned if some of them weren't racist... And that's why I left.
MOE: Oh, my brother complained to me about Obama's meh economic policy and I thought one up on the fly.

I wish he would install Huckabee's tax plan. And then give forensic accounting jobs to all the out of work IRS people trailing financial corruption and enforcing net worth caps. No household should have more than $50
million, period. You want to be a billionaire you can give your money to a massive education and cancer fund. Donations to the church of scientology (or actually, anything having to do with religion and that includes you israel) not allowed. move to switzerland or thecaymans if you want to avoid us but don't expect to get through customs without some hardcore guiltripping.

MEGAN: And anal cavity searches.
MEGAN: Also, Huckabee's economic plan sucks and was designed to pander to a very small slice of the conservative electorate. There's something to be said for progressive taxation.
MEGAN: The reason really, really wealthy people donate money to causes like the "fair" tax and the "flat" tax is that they'll pay a lot less money that way. Also, because it would exempt capital gains from taxation. And the fair tax, if I recall, is basically like a national sales tax, so it's incredibly regressive but [waves shiny things] look over there and we'll totally refund that to poor people at the end of the year and whatever. Plus all fair tax advocates like to stand really, really close to you and don't have great breath.
MOE: It may have been designed to pander to those types, but it appealed to me as well, they just need to punish people for accumulating pointless weath a whole lot more. The thing that gives me hope is all the guys like Shawn Erfman, actually. The thing about this country is that a whole lot of unskilled working-class lower class whatever types are not actually dumb. Precisely because they are bitter! They have been forced by underemployment to sift through that which is their own fault, that which is the government's, that which is the fault of the mindless pandering to public sensibilities that get unnecessarily ruffled over the use of non-euphemisms such as "bitter." I feel like, people in cities have this sense that people out there all like people from Borat or something, and like, well, naw.
MOE: Oooooh the debate is tonight.
MEGAN: Yes, sadly.

MEGAN: Obama hasn't RSVP'd for the one in NC that was originally scheduled for the 19th with Katie Couric but is now rescheduled for the 27th and I'm praying desperately that he won't.
MOE: Hey did you read this story about Juarez? The drug war: still a mess! I'm ashamed to say that the headline "Wild West Blood Bath" and the touting of 210 deaths got me hooked. But it was only 210 in the last three months which is conveniently 70 a month which is just over two a day which is just like Philadelphia, and the crime networks seem just as confusing. (But somehow more Soderberghian.)

MEGAN: Is it sad that part of me was like, well, maybe if crime gets organized there then whatever dude or group of dudes has been raping and murdering women will get killed/run out of town? Because God knows the cops ain't been that successful at it.
MOE: Oh look it's John Paulson back in the news. John Paulson is the hedge fund manager who got the idea to figure out how to buy credit default swaps or something. His strategy got totally ripped off by his smarmy friend Jeff, but he still made out with $3.7 billion last year.
MEGAN: Wait, that dude's got a smarmier friend?
MEGAN: Never mind, I scrolled down. I'd call that creepy more than smarmy.
MOE:

Even on Wall Street, where money is the ultimate measure of success, the size of the winnings makes some uneasy. "There is nothing wrong with it — it's not illegal," said William H. Gross, the chief investment officer of the bond fund Pimco. "But it's ugly."

MEGAN: I think enforcement would be too much of a problem, personally. I mean, law enforcement sucks now. We have a huge tax gap already, which is a hugely euphemistic way of saying "tons of people cheat on their taxes" and between the IRS and Congress no one can figure out what the fuck to do about it that doesn't cost more than the money we're losing to cheaters... so they don't do anything, and then the rest of us just end up paying more in taxes than we should have to in order to subsidize the cheaters.
MEGAN: Like Wesley Snipes.

MEGAN: Sorry to wonk out there. Um, maybe we can discuss the obvious unrequited love that Hillary spokesperson Phillipe Reines has for Chelsea, as pictured here? His face totally says "She doesn't hug me like that now, but she'll notice me someday" and the whole article is about how overprotective he is of her and how he hates reporters and stuff. Sweetie, she's just not that into you. Unrequited love sucks, find someone who likes you for you and forget about her.

MOE: Wait, wait! I thought we were talking about something boring and dry that for whatever reason stokes my inner Marxist leninist spirit! A long time ago I read about some sort of tax on all flows of money. A proposal that would just slow the liquidity down ever so slightly. I'm not sure if it's possible or would be effective. But like, in the cases of the hedge fund investment bank plutocracy where most of the time the compensation is a matter of public record, we should be able to go after the cheats, no? Ugh, I hate this business. Here's something interesting.

MOE:

With a combined $2 trillion under management, the hedge fund industry is coming off its richest year ever — a feat all the more remarkable given the billions of dollars of losses suffered by major Wall Street banks.

MEGAN: Yeah, I tried reading the Merrill article but my eyes crossed somewhere around the point where their insurance company bailed and they decided to buy more stuff their insurance company said was too risky and then the company paid them more because they took their piggie-securitized-mortgages and put a tiara/high rating on it.
MEGAN: I think that a lot of hedge funds would just go offshore, but, yes, a tax on capital flows would probably reduce the flows but also drive them offshore and rich people would just be rich somewhere else. Actually, I mean, I'd be fine with going and being rich somewhere else right now. Or just rich. Or just somewhere else.

Pretty much everyone ignored that, until Bonnie Erbe at U.S. News & World Report pointed out that using the word "sweetie" is just ever-so-slightly offensive. As an Northeastern girl now living on the border of the South, I cringe when people call me "sweetie" — but I know women who don't mind at all. Is it a regional thing? Or is it just always an obnoxious diminutive? And why did it take two days for anyone to notice?

Obama's 'Sweetie' Problem [US News]
Obama Gets "Very Flirtatious" At Campaign Stop [Huffington Post]

SPENCER: we gonna do this?
MEGAN: See, if you were Moe we would totally be discussing the whole people in Pennsylvania might be kind of racist thing, but I don't know anyone from Latrobe, don't drink Rollg Rock (which isn't even brewed there anymore) and I can't really say for Pennsylvania, so unless you've got thoughts, we might want to just talk about the dude who was stockpiling AK-47s because they would be really valuable when Hillary got elected and banned them.
SPENCER: unfortunately, DC's popular coffee shop Busboys and Poets hosts wi-fi so weak that I can't open any links, so I need you to flesh that story out for me a bit
srsly, this is like dial-up or something
and why would you drink rolling rock? yuengling!
If yuengling ever decided to launch a national ad campaign, it should use 'Jingling Baby' by LL
'it's yueng-a-ling, baby/ go 'head baby...'
MEGAN: Well, I don't really drink beer ever, except for that beer I brought to poker night which I found out I liked when I told a bartender I didn't drink beer and he made me try every single one in the bar, and there were 40.
That was a lot of beer. By the end, I sort of didn't care either way, but I liked that one best.
SPENCER: god, you know what was a great band? Catherine Wheel
MEGAN: Oh, right, the story. Um, people in Latrobe never say they're not going to vote for Obama because he's black but they've got all these other reasons that don't sound legit and it makes themm sound like they won't vote for him because he's black. The best quote is this:

In a place like Latrobe, which the census says is 99 percent white, the race issue is almost an unexplored country that people visit like tourists with a phrase book.

His flat delivery often makes him seem bored with his own stories — as he did Tuesday, when he told a crowd of current students at his alma mater, "Memory often accords our high school years the distinction of being among the happiest of our lives. I remember Episcopal in that light."

• Mariah Carey has officially had more #1 hits than Elvis, not that the whole math of hitmaking is really what it used to be, and speaking of math she explains her whole theory of relativity thing thusly: "It's like emancipation of Mariah Carey to the second power and beyond." [WSJ]
  
• The man with the uterus is supposedly appearing on tomorrow's Oprah. I am so, so sad I'm taking the rest of the week off. [People]
  
• A bunch of new polls say Obama is gaining on Hillary in Pennsylvania. This is confusing, because just two hours ago I got an email from my friend, a Hillbot, claiming that the opposite was occurring, and I shot back that blah blah blah I don't believe polls ever, and that is particularly true right now. [Philly.com]
  
• A human-cow embryo was created in Britain and it survived for three days. Somehow this sort of advancement is supposed to actually make stem cell research less controversial with religious people and such, although I think the scientific community might be overestimating the religious community's capacity to understand how. [Reuters]
  
• You thought they couldn't find a new a twist on the power figure/prostitute scandal but! The spouse of Michigan's junior senator was fucking prostitutes. Yup, the spouse of (female) senator, Debbie Stabenow, was caught picking up a $150 hooker in the town of... Big Beaver. [Wonkette]

• A couple married for 75 years died within hours of each other. People who knew them were quick to point out that she got really fat and that he stayed terribly thin so I guess that whole body weight-mortality link isn't all it's cracked up to be. [WFAA]
• An unconstitutional law to almost-ban abortion will probably be back on the South Dakota ballot in November, though it didn't pass in 2006 and the past two years have not exactly been awesome for their cause. [Wash Post]
• Wal-Mart, which was always a pioneer in ensuring all its employees were so impoverished they'd always be eligible for federally subsidized health care, is now doing some confusingly contradictory things and my head hurts.
• A new province in Western China is getting angry at the government, only this time — oh noes! — it's the one with the angry Muslims. Who are demanding that the government allow them to wear headscarves. THE BETTER TO HIDE THEIR WEAPONS. [IHT]
• It looks like Robert Mugabe has lost the Zimbabwe parliamentary elections. This by no means means the end of Mugabe's 28-year rule, but it does mean something...Developing. [NYT]
• Bye guys! You won't see me till Monday. Now, to summon the willpower to get the entirety of the rest of my life that is not this blog sorted out before then.

• For some inexplicable reason publishers seem to think Michelle Obama could write a bestseller. Perhaps it was that college thesis? The admirable physique? Just hard up for cash in a challenging credit environment? [Observer]
  
• McCain: the "first real postmodernist candidate for the presidency." ? [NYT]
  
• Why would you assume our passports were made in U.S. America? [Washington Times]
  
• Sigh of relief for society! Jamie Lynn Spears is engaged. [US]
  
• Boycotting the Olympics: actually a pretty powerful condemnation of repression, when you think about it. Oh, well. [Slate]
  
• Some guy made up a story about how Diddy knew about Tupac's assassination plot and the LA Times totally bought it but the source turned out to be a "wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as 'a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.'" [TheSmokingGun]

• I am fucking sick of all these polls saying 28% of Hillary supporters would vote for McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee and 19% of Obama supporters feel the same way, especially when the national matchup polls prove they are talking out of their asses. [Gallup
• Wait, let's broaden that statement: I am fucking sick of all of it. And: what he said. [Politico]
• Also, what Nancy said too. I think. [CNN]
• Foreclosure bus tour! [Breitbart]
• Wall Street losses from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market may amount to $460 billion, which is half a trillion dollars. (Wow, Moe, way to put shit into context there.) [Bloomberg]
• Jezebel in the news: our very own commenter RyanB writes about being a tragic mulatto like Barry and how she's — scandale! — still registered to vote in Pennsylvania. If you ask me, the real tragedy is that there are no jobs in Philly.
• The Hills premiere was the highest rated thing on cable all year, which isn't really saying much, although it's saying something, and whatever that is is sufficient to depress me. [US]

MEGAN: Ok, can we start with a moment of silent reflection over the most important news of the last 2 days?
  And, by that, I mean the news that Patrick Swayze has cancer.
MOE: Ugh, PANCREATIC cancer. I've never heard of that happening to any celebrity before. Pancreatic cancer is a death sentence. I don't know much about the pancreas but the cancer seems crazily effective at destroying it instantly.
MEGAN: And then, presumably, metastasizing wildly. I know he's doing well, yadda yadda yadda, but I have a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach and not just because someone threw a bomb in Times Square this morning.

MOE: Ack! An IED. Oh for Chrissakes. Funny in the article they call it an "improved explosive device" but I don't think that's right! So they threw the thing in front of the Armed Forces Career Center...a puzzling target if there ever was one. I suppose I should turn on the TV and keep up to the minute on this one. Don't they have like nine thousand security cameras up in that shit? Glad I don't have to sit and pore over all that footage.
MEGAN: There's about to be a press conference! And everyone seems to think it's some sort of liberal protest! It's like our own small-scale, military-recruiting-focused Timothy McVeigh. Way to go, war-protesting, hippie bike-riding dude! Now we're like them!
MOE: Do you think it's an "ecoterrorist"?
MEGAN: Oh, God, right, ELF's back, I forgot about that shit.
 MOE: They also got the Mexican Consulate and the British Consulate ...so...they don't like margaritas, and they don't like Chris Hitchens?
Or maybe it's that guy from American Idol.
MEGAN: I do have to say, though, Hitchens' much-trumpeted veneers are really spectacular in person. The rest of him, not so much. 
MOE: So anyway, NAFTA. I guess if the Prime Minister really wanted to find the source of that nasty leak that sunk Barack Obama he should have asked his own top aide!
MEGAN: Aw, the dude has that weird baldness tuft that should immediately be buzzed the hell down. And, um, is he a Clinton fan? Or just likes screwing with stuff?
  Also, how excited must the Canadians be that we're actually sort of, you know, influenced by them?
The left wants to call in the Mounties! I've been to their training academy. They look sort of doofie on TV but are generally kind of cute and not in a bad-boy Marine kind of way.
MOE: Hahaha that guy they just interviewed looks like my bartender
MEGAN: Ooh, the one downstairs? He's nice.
MOE: So people felt it all the way up on the 44th floor, but it didn't really do anything. I guess we should talk about the implications of this...so what are the implications of this? That knowing some amateurs made a bomb that interrupted the sleep of a bunch of tourists in Time Square who don't have to be at work in the morning anyway ...will be the electoral nail in the coffin of Barack (I never wanted to kill my good friend Saddam) Hussein Obama?
MEGAN: I would think that this sort of crap would piss off the independent voters that either Hillary or Barack need in order to win. It would be like if some crazy right wing guy shot up a gay rights march or something — reasonable people quite reasonably shy away from that kind of shit and the people/candidates/causes it's meant to support or bring attention to.
MOE: Yeah, ugh, whatever, okay; oh god, Charlie Crist, I am getting melanoma just looking at you.
MEGAN: Yeah, he spends a little too much time getting fake baked and then wonders why everyone seems to think he's gay.
MOE: So wait a second, the Republican governor of Florida is coming out in support of counting the delegates Hillary won in the primary in the state where Obama wasn't allowed to campaign? What? Seriously guys, anyone who doesn't think the Republicans are DYING for Hillary to get the nom...does not know enough Republicans. And hey, I can't fault you guys for that. Speaking of, commenter from Pennsylvania who got all snippy at me yesterday for saying they're all racists, 1. I am registered to vote in Pennsylvania so I have the right to say these things and 2. I was referencing the great Ed Rendell himself. Who is also very tanorexic these days. Though definitely not anorexic. Is it a sign of progress that our white politicians are now darker-skinned than our black politicians? Maybe that's why Hillary photoshopped Obama, so he wouldn't look too pale.
MEGAN: Oh, Ed. Here's hoping that shitty comment about your constituents being racist follows you into your own primary race a couple of years from now. If there's anything I can do to help with that, someone please let me know
MOE: How has that recruitment center been doing anyway? Is there any place we can get their numbers? Or is all that some top secret Pentagon shit? Personally I think it's probably a genius idea to be, like, here you are in the worst neighborhood in New York, how bad can Iraq really be? But you have to weigh that against, "ummmm this is what I'm protecting???" P.S. out of town Jezebels and potential terrorists: New York is not all that bad.
MEGAN: I seriously doubt the Pentagon releases center-by-center recruitment stats, but I'll bet the NYC one is more for PR and show than actual recruitment. It's got pretty prominent placement, weirdly, and I feel like it's maybe a historic site or something.
IT was historic, and then they rebuilt it. In 1998, it was the busiest recruiting center in the country, but I'm gonna guess sales have dropped off a bit in 2008.

MOE: Okay so that press conference seemed unremarkable. Oh look, and not another building in New Jersey is collapsing. What an attractive building! Ah, Newark. Can you think of a state with more charming little cities? Elizabeth, Newark, Paterson, Trenton, Camden, ATLANTIC CITY... I love Jersey. I don't know where I was going with that.
MEGAN: I'm meh on Jersey. It's my version of a flyover state.
 
MOE: Ach, you know, scratch that. Look why the nation doesn't need to be worried about more harmless homegrown terror attacks carried out by lone actors on bicycles? Because the nation's intelligence agencies finally got their shit together to start really spying on us MEGAN: Oh, yay! That probably explains why my computer has been so damn slow today. Hello government moles! Enjoy my utter lack of porn or organization and my many, many Desktop icons.