MOE: Ralph Nader thinks Obama is "acting white" to hone in on "white guilt" which doesn't even make sense but white people are eating it up blah blah blah asbestos. Thought 1: I would really love to hear him discuss all this with Karl Rove. Thought 2: Ralph Nader is supposed to be Arab; where does he get off making payday loans and asbestos his thing???

MEGAN: Nader is Arab, though Christian Arabic. My question is whether he went and, like, looked at Obama's plans on predatory credit or mortgage fraud or Obama's agenda on agenda on poverty before he opened his maw and called him "half African-American" as an insult.
MEGAN: Oh, and payday loans are in there, too, Ralphie.

MOE: And Efraim Diveroli reminds Thomas Frank more of Jeff Spicoli than Andy Samberg. He advises Obama to launch a reverse Grace Commission to examine the "sordid history of privatization in all its details." That would, like, make my crappy hour every day. And yeah re Nader, it's not like he spent his political career in Vermont, move on…the antipathy he inspires from the old guard sanctimonious left is kind of amusing.
MOE: See, why can't all those California lefties be like these guys???

MEGAN: I could see you volunteering to staff that commission, dude. Did I ever tell you my dad's old job was "privatized" when Pataki took office in NY? They contracted out his whole department at the university to get people off the ostensible payroll (though mostly people were just shifted around into departments that were led by the friends of the Republican overseers), and in my dad's case, his boss went to the Powers That Be and showed them that the entire department, salaries, benefits and supplies, cost less than the outsourced gig and pointed out the contract they were about to sign would leave the university without technical support after 4.5 months if the number of calls remained the same. The PTB signed the contract anyway, the contractor met his service quota by the end of the 3rd month and stopped providing service at his initial rate, the university ended up quietly re-insourcing the contract and the Republicans got to claim "credit" for "getting" 10,000 people off the state payroll. Good times.
MEGAN: Re: the George Bush Sewage Treatment plant, a synchronized flush is a waste of water, people. Also, Republicans can't talk about wasting money renaming stuff after Republican Congressman now Libertarian Presidential Candidate Bob Barr's little crusade to name a building in every state after Ronald Reagan, which cost millions and millions of dollars. They can suck a ballot-initiative treatment plant and I can call it NATIONAL airport, fuck you very much.
MOE: Tell it to the Disgrace Commission! And yeah everyone calls it National Airport. Was it Chris Hitchens who was once interviewed and the whole time he spent blusterfully refusing to call it Reagan? Anyway that's something we can all agree on. Here is something else: Irish Catholics in the media really fucking how to embarrass themselves.

MEGAN: Um, wow, it's actually kind of hard to offend me but the person (people?) who wrote that have managed. Irish-Catholics are a "gang of kooks"? They have "the obsessiveness of their ethnic/religious culture"? Irish Catholics at NBC are "a gang of such perfect crackpots"? Patrick Buchanan is "the sane one of these three."?
MEGAN: Dude who wrote that: go fuck yourself.
MEGAN: For real.
MEGAN: With a spiky acid-tipped dick.

MEGAN: Instead of me just being angry, why don't we soothe my ruffled feathers by talking about Russ Feingold and why I really think he should've made Obama's short list. The man's a liberal's intellectual wet dream, a civil liberties god, etc.
MOE: Dude, maybe I am just too Irish Catholic, but I read that whole thing and thought - as I laughed — GUITY GUILTY GUILTY. All the oversharing! The demons! Using the romantic notion that the Irish Catholic are some scrappy disadvantaged minority in the Washington news media as an excuse to look out for the interests of Maria Shriver?? No, that's just kind of funny. But Maria Shriver repeating that story? As Kathleen Matthews said "All of us who are Irish say, Let's purge the dark side of our Irishnessand let's hold on to the good positive side of it." Which I think means get me a drink and I'll tell you the story of this one time a guy shaved off my pubic hair before we fucked and I thought it was really funny at the time because I was on Vicodin but not so much when it grew in. He was Catholic too, but Italian or Portuguese or something. Dark.

MOE: All of which is just to say.

MATTHEWS (6/16/08): So let me ask you about the ethnic piece of this. Why do Irish Catholics make some great cops, such great prosecutors? Michael, I mean, they are!
…
BARNICLE: I think it begins—as just Pat referenced, I think it begins with so many Irish Catholics of a certain age, of a certain generation, with their parochial school education, and they come to life later on with a missionary zeal for the truth because it begins in parochial school.

Maybe when I die you and Slut Machine can have an IM about being Irish and use some of these exchanges as a guide!
MEGAN: I used to have a Irish Catholic boyfriend shave my Bush regularly. But I don't think it had anything to do with us being Irish or him being Catholic or me being formerly-Catholic. I just don't like being called a kook or a wackjob because of the religion that my mother chooses to practice. Like we're all some crazy cult or something? I don't have a lot of lines, but that dude crossed it.
9:25 AM
MEGAN: I mean, a lot of NY and Boston cops are Irish. I don't know that I'd call them all great, though. It's more like a family business for a lot of people, like the military but with less moving.
MOE: It just appealed to my missionary zeal for the truth I guess. The "cooks" part was just a joke pretty much. Okay, so what else? Ralph Nader is also profiled in the Post today. Such charisma that guy:

When an aide relays a young woman's request to stop for a picture, Nader has had enough. "No!" he snaps, walking away. "It's always 'one more'!"

MEGAN: Such a nice guy, that Nader. Can you believe people hate him? They've just been brainwashed by the two-party system! It's not because he's an egotistical, self-centered asshole who doesn't care what actually happens to this country as long as he gets on the teevee.
MOE: Oh god and the media is doing its best to make me squirm today…like did the Obama campaign really have to release his iPod playlist? I mean, sure, it's cute when Meghan McCain does it but…wouldn't it have just been cooler if some girl had been using his same Wifi signal and clicked on "Barry's LimeWire Tunes" and then the world got to know the only natural way how Obama was listening to pirated Ludacris tracks?
MOE: Musical interlude

MEGAN: Well, he totally had to prove that 99 Problems wasn't on it! Also, if I find out that the shitty new Sheryl Crow album is on his playlist, I'm out.
MEGAN: Is is sad that I sort of fucking love Roll Out? The summer that song was out, I was working in Bethesda and driving to work, and I used to blast it in the car with the windows down singing along, even though Move Bitch is a better D.C. traffic song.

MOE: God I fucking love YouTube. And no, "Roll Out" is just fucking irrefutable. My friend Don actually has these games, "The Irrefutables" where you take one artist, and you say totally arbitrarily, "Okay, there are nine irrefutable Billy Joel songs, NAME THEM." And then what ensues is part-race, part-debate over whether "Always a Woman" is indeed irrefutable or whether you should be hanged for even suggesting as much. And then there's another game called "You think you're so cool, but you can't deny…" And that's where you take a cheesy song or artist and then the debate is over whether you can, indeed, deny the merits of, you know, "Maybe I'm Amazed."
MOE: Or in the case of the Obama playlist, "My favorite Mistake"
MOE: You can also do it with other things, such as you think you're so cool, but you can't deny…TIM RUSSERT.
MEGAN: This is probs an Irrefutable.
MOE: Dude that movie was fucking irrefutable. The Stones are a band you never want to get into the Irrefutables with though because everyone's drunk and you can't count that high. You have to break it up with bands like that, like maybe Stones songs set in train stations…

MEGAN: Sorry, I'm now totally distracted by the Stones, damn you
MOE: Also, a final thing, you can't get into Irrefutables unless you have a certain amount of distance from the artist. Like I wouldn't personally attempt it with Neko Case or obviously the Replacements or Pavement, and you probably wouldn't want to get into it with Barack Obama and Stevie Wonder and to that end fucking yes, it is summer
MEGAN: Or, we could bring it all back to Tim Russert, yet again, since I'm a narcissitic Irish Catholic.

ME: Ok, so, thanks again for filling in on ultra-short notice despite having a real job.
SPENCER: bffffft it beats reporting on afghanistan
JUST KIDDING BOSS!
ME: Want to trade? You can talk about pubic hair and I'll be all serious and shit.
SPENCER: well speaking of being all up in your snizz
my internet friends are buzzing about this RCP piece about why HRC's women voters should learn to love John McCain

A big sticking point for wavering Democrats will be McCain's position on reproductive rights. Clinton's backers are overwhelmingly pro-choice, and they'll want to know this: Would McCain stock the Supreme Court with foes of Roe v. Wade? The 1973 decision guarantees a right to abortion.

The answer is unclear but probably "no." While McCain has positioned himself as "pro-life" during this campaign, his statements over the years show considerable latitude on the issue.

so, ladies. had enough of those reproductive rights?
ME: That's bullshit. Like, a month ago he was telling Republicans that he wouldn't push this time to add anything to their anti-abortion plank, like how he's spent years trying to get an exception for the life of the mother, rape or incest. Apparently now that he wants to be President, it's cool .
WHERE ARE MY FLIP FLOPS??
SPENCER: i love the cynicism of that concession to mccain's stance on the issue
other politicians have "positions"
StraightTalk McSurge has "statements"
ME: And statements can't contradict each other, it's just what he was thinking at the time.
SPENCER: oh and let's not forget this awesome Weekly Standard piece from the height of the GOP primary

Arizona senator John McCain, currently a bit behind Rudy Giuliani as Republicans' favorite presidential choice for 2008, is far and away the most consistently anti-abortion of all the top contenders. During his 20 years in the Senate (plus four in the House), he has never failed to cast his vote in favor of whatever abortion restrictions are arguably permitted under Roe v. Wade: bans against partial-birth abortion, abortions on military bases, transporting minors across state lines to obtain abortions behind their parents' backs, and government funding for abortion both in the United States and abroad (all but the transporting-minors bill have become federal law). In addition, McCain has voted to confirm every "strict constructionist" judge (that is, disinclined to find, à la Roe, a right to abortion and related activities enshrined in the Constitution) appointed by the various Republican presidents who have served during his tenure, including Robert Bork for the Supreme Court.

i don't really believe that HRC's voters would actually vote for mccain
ME: But he's practically an enemy of the anti-abortion crowd because of McCain Feingold, so, it's cool.
SPENCER: the harriet "inadequate black male" christian lady from the DNC meeting? my guess is she's paid by Roger Stone
she sounds like my dead bubbe
no NYC jewess of that advanced age has "Christian" for a last name
ME: Didn't you see Ferraro's thing yesterday? Apparently, they're sophisticated enough to know that a Democratic Congress will keep their rights totally intact, so they don't care what you say.
SPENCER: i think we talked about it but i didn't see it
ME: Also, they'll just write in Hillary, that's, like, totes not a vote for McCain, just like Nader wasn't a vote for Bush at all.
SPENCER: you know who made that argument?
oh you beat me to it
ME: Occasionally, I can type fast and even accurately!
SPENCER: ps i got an email yesterday from a nader flack (they still exist!) saying nader was up to 6 percent in some poll
it can't POSSIBLY be true
ME: Yeah, Nader's been polling strangely well.
SPENCER: but seriously megan
let's discuss
how could any HRC voter actually vote for a pro-life republican
ME: They are really, really mad. I mean, let us be frank here, some people don't mind cutting off their noses to spite their faces. I come from a family of such women. I struggle every day to remember that what I want to get out of an argument or a situation is more important than acting on my raw emotions.
SPENCER: if what you're saying is correct
then we're really in a situation straight out of Nixonland
where the politics of resentment trumps everything
do you think we're at that point? or are we talking about such a small minority of HRC voters that to focus on them is to miss the point
ME: When doesn't the politics of resentment trump everything? How many people vote for a candidate and not just against the other guy? Witness all the overtures McCain's been making to disaffected HRC voters.
Do I think it's a small percentage? Polls say it's like 17% of her supporters, and 22% are saying they'll stay home.
Even if it's half of that, or ten percent of that, you and I just watched Recount, Gore lost, in the end, by some 350 votes.
SPENCER: ah but take a look at the characterization of such outreach
here's chief mccain douche michael goldfarb — formerly of the WS, now McCain's dep comm dir & blogger — enticing HRC voters with... McCain's love of ABBA.
now i am not a woman
but if i were condescended to like this, i'd be pretty fucking pissed
ME: Plus, is it universal for women to like ABBA?
SPENCER: i am on batting 1.000 on ABBA-agnostic-to-hostile women
ME: I think "Take a Chance On Me" is a crap song, though I did literally have a guy queue it up on my stereo in college to ask me to fuck him. It didn't work.
SPENCER: hahahaha you told me about that.
ME: But I will admit to a long-standing weakness for "Waterloo."
SPENCER: so if i called you a cunt in between verses of waterloo, you'd vote for me?
ME: The only person who gets to hang out with me during "Waterloo" is my best friend, JC, and only then if we're drunk. But, John McCain is no JC Johnson. Or any guy I would hang out with, let alone vote for.

• 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]

MEGAN: Good morning! Did you just see Nader on CNN? He smirked when Obama accused him of hubris and threw it right back.

MOE: Wait, was he actually on with Obama?
 
MEGAN: No, but they played video of Obama responding to a question about him yesterday.
(Is it fair to wonder what is up with his left eye and his slightly slurred speech? Was it always like that or have I just been ignoring him that much?)
 
MOE: Ah yes I did read about that.
I totally voted for Nader in 2000. SIGH.
My boyfriend at the time was actually his California campaign manager

MEGAN: I was googling for a picture to figure out the eye thing, and found this picture instead. I like this one better.
 
MOE: Or some title like that that applied to any other candidate would denote some level of importance..

MEGAN: I sort of what to see him debate Cynthia McKinney for the green party nod.

MOE: I think Obama relishes chances to look like a moderate and he doesn't have many what with the Clinton campaign "circulating" shit like this.

MEGAN: He looks like an Ay-Rab! An Ay-Rab!
He's here to destroy our way of life! Ahhhh!
  [commences running in circles with arms waving in the air]

MOE: So...what else. There's an extremely well-timed New York Magazine cover story about Chelsea Clinton... all the columnists are now grousing about how they still have to write about Hillary Clinton as if she actually has a chance, all the universe, ombudsman included, is still grousing about how bad that John McCain story was, and so we are left with... Ralph Nader.
There's also a lot of last-minute hand wringing over whether Obama is good for the Jews including Bernard-Henri Levy who is in town to talk about neo anti Semitism.
  I'm not sure where to begin with this stuff.
It's all so tiresome!
And I'm so tired!
 
MEGAN: I prefer just talking about silly pictures.
Like, whatever CNN producer thought it appropriate to put Ali Velshi in a cowboy outfit on a horse.
And then showed a picture of Yul Brenner in Westworld.
Oh, and they're debating again tomorrow night. Time to stock up on alcohol, people.
  
Do you think that since her new campaign tactic is to be sarcastic and shit the debates will be more interesting tomorrow?
MOE: Uhhhhh, I guess? I mean, I know never to trust the conventional wisdom, but the conventional wisdom is kinda compelling right now!
MEGAN: I'm just sick of them all playing nice. Yawn.
  
Also, the youngest superdelegate guy just endorsed Obama because Wisconsin and young people are going for Obama.
MOE: Yeah, Jason Rae. I am sick of that kid, too. I'm reading this Chelsea story.
Oooh, fun factoid: Obama's secret service name is Renegade!
MEGAN: Boys.
Also, I love the anecdote about Chelsea flirting with the hot jock on the campaign trail. Like, I want to think I would do it, but I know I'm too much of a weenie.
MOE: Hahaha here it is

Approached by a tall model-handsome college jock at the University of Utah, she literally batted her eyelashes at him. "Hell-o!" she said in a Mae West tone before posing for a snapshot with him.

when Gennifer Flowers sold the story of her affair with Chelsea's dad to Star magazine, including tapes of their intimate phone calls, Hillary took her 11-year-old daughter to the supermarket, pointed out the tabloids, and "told her what we heard was going to be in one of them," because she wanted her "to feel she's a part of this," according to Clinton biographer Sally Bedell Smith. Wead said Chelsea's parents "got a lot of criticism for preparing Chelsea like this. During one of those sessions, she apparently left in tears. Rush Limbaugh said it showed just how ruthless the Clintons were, putting their child through this." Limbaugh's concern was disingenuous, of course. On his TV show, he called her "the White House dog." Wead says, "The Ford children told me they wish they'd had somebody to explain things to them. Instead, they were just thrown upstairs in the White House, with the caveat, 'And by the way, don't make a mistake.' "

That fall, Chelsea couldn't resist reading the Starr report online, including the footnotes. When Bill Clinton learned that she'd read the report, he wept.

"There were these girls around her—it was their mission to have Chelsea be their friend," noted a student who knew her. "The mean girls positioned themselves around Chelsea when everybody was deciding who to live with, and I remember they pushed this sweet girl out of the group. She ended up gaining 25 pounds."

MEGAN: I sorta wanted Chelsea to realize that the girls were mean and be nice to the excluded one, but I'll bet she didn't know. Some women are great at hiding their true nature (and, no, I'm totally not saying that because I found something out this weekend that I was probably better off not knowing about one of my "friends," why do you ask?).
MOE: One of my best friends was good friends with one of her friends at Stanford and visited and told me Chelsea was just kind of unfriendly. Which is totally unsurprising. She's incredibly cautious. The excluded girl ... I dunno.

MEGAN: I mean, I think in that position you surround yourself with people you trust and are hesitant about everyone else. I would be. But I am sort of an unfailingly paranoid person for no reason.

MOE: Okay, so that story was boring. But is it as boring as our next task, which is tallying up the major opinion columnists who are calling for Chelsea's mom to quit?
Colbert King of the Washington Post wants her to quit because she's not black or something.
MEGAN: Oh, for Chrissakes. It's an election, people. Hell, even if you want to assume she's just pounding the potential future nominee, she's airing his dirty laundry far enough in advance of the election to practically inoculate him.
  
*innoculate
MOE: Frank Rich wants her to quit because her campaign reminds him of the Iraq war, with Mark Penn as Rumsfeld.
MEGAN: Mark Penn sucks. This is my completely unbiased and slightly uninformed opinion.
  
But he sucks.
 
MOE: Bob Novak thinks she should quit because she's too clueless to even know she is supposed to quit.

 MEGAN: I can't believe they paid him $10 million and dumped Patti Solis Doyle
Bob Novak is the Earl Of Minor, Creeping Despair. He's like one of the ghosts in The Sixth Sense, insofar and his mere presences causes the temp to plummet.
 
MOE: Eugene Robinson, the early bird here, thinks she should quit because she has the gall not to quit.
MEGAN: Because, God knows, it's important the quit in advance of losing.
*to quit.
  Shit, I can't type this morning.

MOE: Maureen Dowd says she should quit because she's too macho and Obama out-girled her. Umm... how is she not tired of writing the same column every other day?

Obama tapped into his inner chick and turned the other cheek.

MOE: Oooooh, another one: Jonathan Alter thinks she should get out because she will only survive if Obama does something completely retarded and that would be bad for everyone anyway.

MEGAN: Oh, ok, so, she should drop out because Obama fucking up and making himself unelectable is a possibility only if she stays in? I fail to see the logic there.
But it's good to know that political columnists can find 10 ways to say the same thing and get paid! That, like, totally bodes well for my employability.