ANA MARIE: Good morning.

MEGAN: Hello! I now have coffee brewing, it smells good enough I almost feel like I don't hate the world.

ANA MARIE: I am discussing hotel reward points with other reporters and eating bacon and fruit. THE BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS.

MEGAN: Bacon is always a part of the breakfast of champions, and I have now determined what I shall be eating once we finish. Porky deliciousness, which is really just a way to bring up Ted Stevens, who Palin has decided should resign.

ANA MARIE: FINALLY. Next, Palin will appoint herself as replacement.

MEGAN: You know that's coming.

ANA MARIE: Though I do not mean to suggest that Obama is inevitable!

MEGAN: Somehow, though, I don't see her having a warm relationship with Senator McCain when she gets there.

ANA MARIE: We on the trail have been discussing whether or not she will even invite McCain to Bristol's wedding — since he is, you know, the reason why she has to get married. In a just world, he'd officiate.

MEGAN: But they love each other! They always planned to get married! I'll bet she invited him for the gift because you know he ain't flying to Alaska.

ANA MARIE: I actually don't mean to be cynical about that. I mean, I am, but on the other hand: I thought I'd marry my high school bf, too.

MEGAN: Me too! True story: remember those machines in the mall that print business cards and invitations? We printed a fake wedding invite one time.

ANA MARIE:Who do you think WILL have a warm relationship with Sen. McCain? Mel Martinez?

MEGAN: Lindsay Graham's love for McCain will never, ever die.

ANA MARIE: No. He will die wearing the wedding dress he picked out.

MEGAN: He will have to be buried in it. I mean, you gotta admit, he does look really fabulous in it.

ANA MARIE: Guy behind me: "The first polls close in six days, nine hours, and two minutes."

MEGAN: Ok, Rainman. And where do polls close at 5:30?

ANA MARIE: West Viriginia? Maybe he's lying. Some kind of elaborate voter fraud project.

MEGAN: Maybe I am just better at math? It's slightly less elaborate than printing up flyers complete with logos and shit to pretend that Election Day has been moved. I mean, really?

ANA MARIE: What, it hasn't? Shit. I was looking forward to collecting more Hilton Honors points. Also, someone tell Mickey Mouse.

MEGAN: Dude, if they moved it to this week, I would totally be okay with that. It's Wednesday and I'm too tired to move to get the coffee I can now smell. I'm so bored I spent 5 minutes reading about Kwame Kilpatrick's cell and sexy texts just to not think about the election any more and then the damn reporters snuck it in there at the end anyway. Bastards.

ANA MARIE: I was watching a zombie movie last night and couldn't help wondering which party they'd vote for. This election has infected my brain.

MEGAN: I think the zombies, like al Qaeda, would want McCain to win, if only because, what with his arms, he seems like one of them. Yeah, I went there.

ANA MARIE: It's okay. It's hard not to.

MEGAN: Oh, and it turns out that Ashley Todd is not a McCain plant trying to turn people against Obama, she's a Ron Paul plant pretending to be a McCain plant trying to turn people against Obama to turn people against McCain. Soooo crazy. She's like the Manchurian Candidate and shit.

ANA MARIE: Personally, I think zombies would vote for Ron Paul!

MEGAN: He would be like the Pied Piper for zombies, I would agree. All that yelling, they'd be really distracted. Bonus points: after they voted, Ron Paul's living supporters could then serve as sustenance for the zombies. Bonus, bonus points: Democrats could finally accuse Republicans of mining the cemeteries of this great nation for voters.

ANA MARIE: There's a "Chicago machine politician" joke in there somewhere but I haven't finished my bacon.

MEGAN: I need a bacon butler in the morning. And a coffee steward.

ANA MARIE: So did Cindy McCain.

MEGAN: But why did she need John McCain?

ANA MARIE: I think the proper emphasis is, "Why did SHE need John McCain?" Or maybe, "Why did she NEED John McCain?" Sorry, that's totally the lack of bacon talking.

MEGAN: I am seriously going to have to go cook some damn bacon when we finish this.

ANA MARIE: Should we talk about Nicolle Wallace and her sexy under the bus pose?

MEGAN: Yes, I think we should. I'm glad she decided to tell Fred Barnes he'd better apologize.

ANA MARIE: She didn't really tell him that, she just busted out the whoop ass.

MEGAN: Which, good for her, make him squeal like the bitch he is. Who says women can't play political hardball? Don't fuck with Nicolle Wallace.

ANA MARIE: Usually it's just Bill Bennett that makes him do that. She's the velvet fist in an iron glove or whatever. (Speaking of Bill Bennett.) What I loved about Nicolle? She set her sights on Fred and did not let him out during that entire interview. SHE INVOLVED HER DOG IN THE MESSAGING. She's scarier than Mark Salter. He would just hurt you.

MEGAN: Did Fred Barnes make her puppy cry? That bastard!

ANA MARIE: Nicolle can DESTROY YOU. (From the interview: "We reached Wallace Monday night, enjoying a rare evening at home with her dog, Lily, who also joined the conversation at one point. "That's Lily protecting me from Fred Barnes," Wallace explained.")

MEGAN: Nicolle should figure out who suggested to Freddie Back that it was all her fault and destroy him. Rick Davis seems like enough of a backstabbing little diva to do it.

ANA MARIE: I think she has some ideas. No one in the press corps does tho... Seriously, favorite game right now is "who would be so stupid as to get on Nicolle's bad side?" Okay you have just made the obvious point that I should have. Davis. Totally. Wanted to do go to Saks himself

MEGAN: Also, let us take on short moment to point out that the purchases were all made by Robocaller extraordinaire Jeff Larson.

ANA MARIE: Who hasn't even denied it!

MEGAN: With whom one imagines Wallace doesn't necessarily work that closely.

ANA MARIE: Here's the other thing: Wallace is a Bushie. She knows how to hide illegal expenses. There would be no RNC disclosure of Wallace purchases. I kid, obviously. Though I only say that because I think she knows how to have me killed.

MEGAN: It does seem pretty junior varsity, I agree. And Nicolle is not JV squad.

ANA MARIE: Hold on. I have to get wanded.

MEGAN: Tell him to do it the sexy way.

ANA MARIE: I've been wanded! Wanded is one of the words I'll miss from the campaign. That and "manifest." As in a staffer telling me, "I'll manifest you." It sounds like one simply APPEARS somewhere.

MEGAN: Manifest destiny is all I can think of when you say that.

ANA MARIE: See, I think of manifestations.

MEGAN: I think I have proved once and for all that I paid way too much attention in class.

ANA MARIE: And I pay too much attention to the SciFi channel.

MEGAN: So, shall we briefly discuss the irony of the woman who wants to change the Constitution to give herself more power if she wins accusing her opponent of wanting to change the Constitution?

ANA MARIE: Do you think Palin would recognize the Constitution if she saw it? Like, the text? Maybe the part about guns...

MEGAN: I'm not sure she would recognize it if it walked up to her on the street Schoolhouse Rock style and slapped her for all the shit she's been talking about it behind its back.

ANA MARIE: But then she would shoot it.

First up, Lois Romano calls it "The Year of The Woman" in the Washington Post, since no one thought that being a woman automatically disqualified Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin from running for or holding office. That's apparently "news" or "a trend" in the parlance. It's also noteworthy that feminists don't like the misogyny hurled at Sarah Palin and that her position on reproductive choice and initial embrace of the label "feminist" — a label she has since rejected — has sparked a broad discussion about whether feminism as a movement can embrace women with illiberal views on choice. We're also supposed to be excited that Sarah Palin can look cute and hug John McCain and run for office. Well, while I am glad that being attractive doesn't disqualify her but I don't like that she makes it so much a part of her public image and then seems ill-grounded in the issues the candidates are supposed to be running on. Conservative activist and lawyer Cleta Mitchell has a answer to my concerns, though:

"Even if Sarah Palin is as 'unqualified' as the left would have us believe," she wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal, ". . . then former congresswoman Bella Abzug's lifelong goal has been achieved. She used to say that she was 'working for the day when a mediocre woman could get as far as a mediocre man.'

Dick Cheney is many things, but he's not mediocre. Dan Quayle, though... But, no, I'm sorry, I kind of want the woman who breaks the glass ceiling to be more than mediocre, so that no one can come up behind her and superglue it back together.

The Economist notes, rightly, that women vote in larger numbers than men and that while they support Obama by a small margin, "A whopping 60% of women aged 50 and younger have a negative view of Mrs Palin, according to a poll released by the Pew Research Centre on October 21st." While conservatives, including McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, have said that's because we're jealous of her being pretty and happy, could it be because women are paying attention and aren't keen about the winking, the hair-tossing or her stance on many issues? The Economist thinks that might just be possible:

Mr McCain has left traditional women's issues to Mr Obama - in the final debate the Republican candidate derided women's "health" as an excuse for abortions. The campaign is instead pursuing women through broad arguments of character, leadership and policy — something similar to the appeal to "security moms”"that worked well for George Bush in 2004.

That is, in fact, what they're trying to do — get us to stop paying attention to the issues and think John McCain is just a bang-up guy. Whatevs, people, fool us once...

Finally, JoNel Aleccia at MSNBC puts together a strong piece debunking myths about women voters that, since it needs to be said at all, makes my head want to meet my desk (if I had one...a desk, that is). The myths dispelled include the idea that the McCain campaign was trying to take advantage of the female vote with Palin's nomination, that we vote less often, that we vote only on "women's issues" — as though the economy and the health care system and the war have no effect on our lives — and that the gender gap is growing and it's our fault (in fact, men are the more fickle voters). Now if only we could get someone to debunk the idea causing all these stories to get approved that play into the stereotype that women don't normally care this much.

Ideology Aside, This Has Been the Year of the Woman [Washington Post]
Palin Changes Tune On Feminist Label [CNN]
Hard To Get [The Economist]
Rick Davis: Palin Drives 'Liberal Feminists' Crazy Because She's 'Attractive,' 'Competent,' and 'Happy.' [Think Progress]
When XX Marks The Ballot: Six Gender Myths [MSNBC]

Earlier: Does Anyone Else Feel Like Their Value As A Voter Has Just Been Discovered?

Draper's piece — in which he quotes staff mostly off the record — gives all the credit blame to campaign top dogs Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt for the Palin pick, and does little to counter the impression that she was thoroughly vetted. Davis picked her out of a hat having met her once, convinced Schmidt and then speechwriter Mark Salter and finally John McCain, who'd only met her once and certainly had not been following her career as he's since claimed. It doesn't address the speculation that McCain really, really wanted Lieberman and Schmidt had to talk him out of it — though it does mention that Lindsay Graham was a big fan. It does however, quote Davis saying that they picked her in no small part because she would look good on a magazine cover — and that everyone recognized that she wasn't exactly solidly grounded in any policy issues.

Reviewing the tape, it didn’t concern Davis that Palin seemed out of her depth on health-care issues or that, when asked to name her favorite candidate among the Republican field, she said, “I’m undecided.” What he liked was how she stuck to her pet issues — energy independence and ethics reform — and thereby refused to let Rose manage the interview. This was the case throughout all of the Palin footage. Consistency. Confidence. And . . . well, look at her. A friend had said to Davis: “The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and you put the pictures of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best — that’s your V. P.”
Schmidt, to whom Davis quietly supplied the Palin footage, agreed. Neither man apparently saw her lack of familiarity with major national or international issues as a serious liability. Instead, well before McCain made his selection, his chief strategist and his campaign manager both concluded that Sarah Palin would be the most dynamic pick.

While her inexperience and unfamiliarity didn't affect the top staffers, there were others who, even savoring the nomination, had concerns.

The following night, after McCain’s speech brought the convention to a close, one of the campaign’s senior advisers stayed up late at the Hilton bar savoring the triumphant narrative arc. I asked him a rather basic question: “Leaving aside her actual experience, do you know how informed Governor Palin is about the issues of the day?”

The senior adviser thought for a moment. Then he looked up from his beer. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t know.”

It might not be the harshest indictment we've heard of Sarah Palin, but even the people vetting her didn't think she was grounded in the issues of importance as much as she made a good symbolic figurehead. Feminist choice, my ass.

The other major issue that the piece throws into sharp relief is how much the campaign has lacked in a singular narrative focus this year.

And yet on this landscape of new tricks — calling your opponent a liar; allowing your running mate to imply that the opponent might prefer terrorists over Americans — McCain sometimes seemed to be running against not only Barack Obama but an earlier version of himself.

McCain's a maverick, but he's the kind of guy who can get everyone to the table and fix the financial crisis; Obama's an inexperienced celebrity, and they picked an inexperienced celebrity as a running mate; John McCain hates negative campaigning but Obama was asking for it. McCain's campaign really has had my head (for one) whipping from side-to-side as it changes tactics and narratives every time it suffers a 1-point drop in the polls. The reason independent voters and the press liked McCain in 2000 was because he was supposed to be above all this petty politicking that he's subsequently engaged in. The problem is that McCain may — or may not — place his country first, but his campaign has certainly put winning before showing the American people the truth of that.

The Making (And Remaking And Remaking) Of McCain [New York Times]

Related: Who Knows Strategy V. Tactics? McCain Or Obama? And Where Is McCain's Flag Lapel Pin? [Huffington Post]
Team McCain Rips NYT [Politico]
Conservative Ire Pushed McCain From Lieberman [New York Times]

According to some polls, Obama is up by over 10 points, and I think the McCain camp is approaching the next two weeks as another opportunity to throw a few Hail Marys: they're throwing up every crazy thing that occurs to them and seeing if anything sticks. For the past few days, that narrative has been that Palin is the "right" kind of feminist, and women who vote for Barack Obama, as well as Obama himself, are the "wrong" kinds of feminists. Women who voted for Hillary Clinton, however, can be the right kinds of feminists but only if they're voting for McCain.

Palin also said yesterday that Obama pays his female staffers less than he pays his male staffers, a claim which will be taken on by Megan later today. Palin said, “I know one senator who actually does pay women equally…That’s something I admire about John McCain. He’s not someone who makes excuses." So I guess he doesn't have an excuse for why he didn't even bother to show up to vote for the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Amendment. And maybe he has an excuse for why he favors the rights of big business over little ladies. If he had been there, McCain said he would have voted against the amendment because it "opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems…This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system."

Catharine MacKinnon, feminist scholar and law professor, used the Lilly Ledbetter situation as an example of why Obama is the way forward for women in a Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday. Of course, she also mentions abortion access as a major reason women should support Obama. "Since 1980, when the Supreme Court permitted exclusion of medically necessary abortions from Medicaid coverage, poor women (disproportionately women of color) have not had effective access to abortion because they cannot afford it," MacKinnon argues. "This was when many women lost the right to choose."

But Catharine MacKinnon would be supportive of Lilly Ledbetter and poor women getting abortions, 'cause she's one of them "liberal feminists" with their "agendas." What is this liberal feminist agenda that McCain and Palin seem to hate so deeply? Is it just about abortion? Because McCain and Palin at least pay lip service to wanting equal pay. Maybe there's a list of liberal feminist commandments written on hemp with the blood from a diva cup that I'm not aware of, but last time I checked, liberal feminists believe in many different, sometimes conflicting things.

But leave it to McCain campaign manager Rick Davis to explain what liberal feminists really stand for. Apparently they Sarah Palin because she's "very attractive", "very competent" and "very happy." In the clip below, our girl Rachel Maddow sticks it to Davis. "Everyone knows that feminists hate happy women," Maddow says. "And they really hate it when women work!" I know I shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore, but I can't believe that the Republican ticket really believes that this divisive, logically inconsistent attack on "liberal feminists" is going to get them any votes.

Palin Criticizes Obama as Faux Feminist [NY Times]
Obama Is the Way Forward for Women [WSJ]
Rick Davis: Palin Drives 'Liberal Feminists' Crazy [Think Progress]

Earlier: Why Sarah Palin's Looks Matter
Meet Lilly Ledbetter. She's A Good Reason To Vote Against John McCain

• This is an actual direct mail piece from the Virginia Republican Party, encouraging people to vote against "evil." I encourage people to vote against evil, too — the kind of evil that would stoke racial fears to win an election. [Mark Halperin]
• Also, please vote against the kind of evil that thinks it's funny to put a picture of Obama on a fake food stamp adorned with fried chicken and watermelon. That would be the evil that comes out of the California group Chaffey Community Republican Women [The Press Enterprise]
• Or the kind that suggests that Obama's mother would've aborted him had she the legal right to, so he should consider taking away that right from other people. [National Review]

• Joe The Plumber isn't really named Joe, isn't really a licensed plumber, wouldn't really pay more in taxes under Obama's plan — but he might have to pay his back taxes now. Naughty, naughty. Oh, and because his name is misspelled on his voter registration card, he'd be stopped from casting his ballot if he was a newbie. [NY Times, Politico]
• The Secret Service is now actively separating the press from McCain supporters, which is rather a broad interpretation of their mission to protect the candidate. [Washington Post]
• Unsurprisingly, the FBI and Justice Department are investigating ACORN "for any evidence of a coordinated national scam." Because that's likely. [Huffington Post]
• That lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who the New York Times said had an affair with John McCain broke her silence and said that she didn't. She thinks she got dragged into it because of some bad feelings between former McCain aide John Weaver and current McCain aide Rick Davis, but who knows. [National Journal]
• But just to end things on an upbeat note for once, go read the inspiring story of civil rights leader Andrew Young who got to cast a ballot for a black Presidential candidate today. It's sweet. [Traverse City Record Eagle]

MEGAN: Good morning! Was your Saturday night as "opulent" as McCain's? I mean, I know eating on the road sucks, but it doesn't seem like he had to come all the way back to D.C. after the debates to eat at a good hotel restaurant.

KAY: I know. This sort of puts Obama's claim about a Katrina-like response. I think what Obama meant was McCain's Katrina response. You know, when he and Bush were having a birthday party.

MEGAN: "Let them eat cake?" Oh, wait, that was Barbara Bush, never mind. I also love that he flew all the way back here after the debate to hang out in his Congressional office and call people, but that he couldn't be bothered to walk down to the Senate floor to vote on a spending bill that contained earmarks. I think he really has turned into a complete wuss. He didn't want to be seen voting for earmarks, nor voting against a spending bill that contained offshore drilling provisions, so he just went to dinner 5 minutes away.

KAY: Seems like a good use of time. Maybe he played some craps while he was at it —with the $700 billion bailout money.

MEGAN: I mean, who doesn't like a good Indian casino? Not McCain, that's for sure. Although, I'm just putting this out there, I haven't been in a casino yet, Indian or otherwise, that didn't make me grind my teeth. I don't think an alcoholic beverage should cost me $8 in the middle of nowhere in Connecticut.

KAY: Yeah, casinos tend to be filled with a lot of sad old people. I guess that includes McCain.

MEGAN: A lot of sad old people that aren't nearly drunk enough to be entertaining because they can't afford $6 beers and quarter slots at the same time. Sorry, I digress. I really, really hate casinos.

KAY: Don't worry, me too. In any case, we should probably say something about how McCain's debate performance on Friday was a big FAIL.

MEGAN: Oh, yeah, there's all kinds of evidence that he didn't play well with the crowds. I personally think it was because most Americans tuned out — figuratively or literally — once the discussion turned to foreign policy, so that most of them missed the preconditions/preparation debacle.

KAY: Well, it's easy to misspeak. McCain said we were at an "existential" crisis with Iran. I'm not even sure what that means. Did he just take freshman philosophy?

MEGAN: I know, I thought the same thing! But then I realized that he just meant that he thought Iran would be a threat to the existence of Israel, i.e., nuke it, and I wondered why the McCain camp is so obsessed with nuclear war and yet its Vice Presidential candidate can't correctly identify the purpose of the Bush Doctrine, which is to allow us to nuke people without provocation.

KAY: Well, if we're going to put nuclear war on the table we want to make sure we have at least one person "a heartbeat away" who has no clue about foreign policy

MEGAN: I mean, right? Palin's so bad even McCain's staffers are telling reporters that she's "clueless". And Jack Cafferty — no bastion of liberalism — had this to say:

"If John McCain wins this woman will be one 72-year-old's heartbeat away from being President of the United States. And if that doesn't scare the hell out of you, it should."

KAY: I know, even the right isn't so sure about her anymore. But at least we have Tina Fey to make us laugh. The thing is, those sketches are getting less funny the more true they are. I feel like this sketch was eerily similar to Palin's actual answer about the bailout.

MEGAN: I really thought some of what Tina Fey said early on was a direct quote, but I'd been drinking for 11 and a half hours at that point. I did find it uproariously funny.

KAY: It's always prudent to drink for 11 and a half hours.

MEGAN: It was a wedding! I was less amused at the part where she agreed with Obama on Pakistan and then McCain retracted it for her, though. Well, that and that she went to Geno's instead of Pat's. Geno's is the cheesesteak place with the signs requiring that you order in English.

KAY: Don't worry, I think the "October surprise" this year is going to be Bristol's wedding.

MEGAN: Well, it can't be that much of a surprise if we're already talking about it. Also, the thought of Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis dreamily talking about how marrying off Bristol Palin on her 18th birthday (it is a Saturday, after all!) is sort of incredibly creepy. Especially as a way to have the first-ever pre-election wedding in history. That's just, like, ewww.

KAY: So ewww. Well, we all know that you're not a real woman until you're married, right?

MEGAN: Well, you become a woman when you start bleeding out your cooch but only a real woman when you lock a man down to it for life or until the inevitable, painful and public divorce. I'm so glad that I'm not a girl and not yet a woman. And yes, I did just make a Britney reference. Seemed appropriate.

KAY: So appropriate.

SPENCER: So should we go forward with Crappy Hour or can you tell Anna that the seriousness of the financial crisis merits a suspension of the feature?

MEGAN: Oh, sure, I mean, you and I really need to get up in the Hill this morning and involve ourselves in negotiations for the bailout package that we've been heretofore uninvolved in, because our presence and our presence alone will resolve the 3 days of negotiations. It'll just take a few days. She'll understand. It's a crisis after all. And totally unlike the mortgage crisis that spawned legislation that we ignored a couple of months ago. This one is important.

SPENCER: Country First, goddammit.

MEGAN: This is not a time for partisan politics!

SPENCER: I think in 42 days, we're going to look back on this as the day McCain lost the election. A more massively unforced error I cannot imagine.

MEGAN: I guess it depends on whether you're Steve Schmidt and think that debating Obama on Friday (or having Palin debate Biden next week) would be a bigger error.

SPENCER: While I was watching Bush's speech last night, a whole other dimension of error occurred to me: why does it benefit McCain to go meet with the least popular president in history, the one whose legacy McCain has to distance himself from?

MEGAN: The only thing I can think is what some Republipundit said last night, which is that it forces Obama to interact positively with Bush, inoculating McCain to a degree, and it might allow McCain to call a shitty bailout bill a "Bush-Obama" bill. If that's the actual thinking — if there is actual thinking involved in this decision — then kudos.

SPENCER: No, that doesn't match the timeline. Remember, at 8:30 a.m. yesterday, Obama called McCain and proposed a joint statement. McCain responded affirmatively around 2ish, and then an hour later announced this no-debate stunt. The likeliest explanation is that McCain huddled with Davis and Schmidt and thought about how to throw the ball further downfield. But here they miscalculated almost completely: SurveyUSA found only 10 percent think the debate should be put off.

MEGAN: Well, at least Schmidt and Davis managed to find some people in the tank for them.

SPENCER: I guess the Bush thing could have been trying to bind Obama, but he can't turn down a presidential invite, and could just as easily put out a release as tepid as... the joint statement he did with McCain.

MEGAN: According to Obama, though, McCain brought it up at the 2:30 conference call and Obama said, let's have our people discuss it when they're talking about the joint statement. So it was on McCain's mind before. But, yeah, they were in the midst of negotiating that statement when McCain made his announcement. So, it's unsurprising that the statement is tepid.

SPENCER: Meanwhile McCain looks like a complete pussy. He's too chickenshit to debate Obama — dude, al-Qaeda bombed the fucking USS Cole in October 2000 and Bush and Gore still debated! — and now looks like a supplicant to Bush. One unforced error on top of another.

MEGAN: Oooh, nice catch on the USS Cole. Also, I'd like to point out the absurdity of the idea that Congress will be negotiating this at 9:00 on Friday night.

SPENCER: Here's another unforced error! If you're suspending the campaign, don't send out talking points on suspending the campaign! Sorry to make you open a PDF.

MEGAN: I love how we can fix the economy by the time the markets open on Monday with legislation. Presto-chango! It's fixed!

SPENCER: We don't even really need to comment on the transparent foolishness of this stunt. Within 30 minutes the bigfoot journalists on secret listservs I'm on digested it and became immediately appalled. It's a waste of time to even treat the idea seriously.

MEGAN: Dude, I started laughing hysterically when I heard. Like, it might have been the 3 cups of coffee, but I was wiping away tears listening to it, I was laughing that hard.

SPENCER: The only right-wing journalists still shilling for this are at the Weekly Standard. Even NRO readers aren't buying the dog food. Look at what Bill Kristol wrote:

As for the question of Friday night's debate, which some in the media seem to think more important than saving the financial system—if the negotiations are still going on in D.C., McCain should offer to send Palin to debate Obama! Or he can take a break from the meetings, fly down at the last minute himself, and turn a boring foreign policy debate, in which he and Obama would repeat well-rehearsed arguments, into a discussion about leadership and decisiveness. And if the negotiations are clearly on a path to success, then McCain can say he can now afford to leave D.C., fly down, and the debate would become a victory lap for McCain.

I read that and thought of the scene in Boogie Nights when a coked-out Dirk Diggler tries desperately to get erect, tears rolling down his face, talking to his cock like "come on... come on..."

MEGAN: Um, I can't believe you just made me think about Bill Kristol's cock just there. I love this part, though, Country First my ass.

Of course his motives were partly election-related. But "the interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place."

McCain is America! America is McCain! What's right for him is right for everyone! Quick, everyone swap spouses! Call your wife a cunt!

SPENCER: I call Kim Kagan. I will sex her up like Color Me Badd.

MEGAN: Will you give her your dick in a boxx?

SPENCER: Ohhh, maybe Noemie Emery. I hear she crazy. Like, files-her-pieces-on-legal-legal-paper crazy.

MEGAN: Oh, her poor interns.

SPENCER: Should probably record a take-off on a Biggie song. "Dreams (Of Fucking A Right-Wing Bitch)." Noemie, I'm just playing! ... I'm saying!

MEGAN: Man, I think we could totally make a YouTube video out of that.

SPENCER: Back to McCain. (Yo, Meghan, don't take me seriously girl. I know you're reading. Don't mind what I say about your dad. Hit me up. 281-330-8004. My girlfriend doesn't have to know.)

MEGAN: Hey, look, Cynthia McKinney, Bob Barr and Ralph Nader are offering their services. I think that should be McCain's punishment if he bails on Friday. He should have to debate them, and Obama gets a night to himself.

SPENCER: How does McCain dig himself out of this? The debate is clearly going to happen tomorrow.

MEGAN: If it doesn't, he's cost the taxpayers of Mississippi $5 million for his little stunt. Oh, how do you like your low-spending Republicans now, Red State Mississippi? At least Obama gives a shit about how he spends your money.

SPENCER: He's going to have to slink down to Mississippi, backtracking on all this, an object of total ridicule for Obama. And McCain's temper cannot handle ridicule.

MEGAN: Yeah, I don't think him showing up tomorrow is going to be some big victory lap around Ole Miss, Bill Kristol's masturbatory epistles aside.

SPENCER: I'm kind of expecting Nancy Phflorfhfthflhflfhthloger to put out a statement about how McCain spent FIVE AND A HALF YEARS not being able to debate anyone.

MEGAN: He was just doing what he always does! Like with the Surge, he was doing what he thought was right, electoral consequences be damned!! Nancy Pfuckingsucks actually said that yesterday.

SPENCER: No! She did????

MEGAN: Yes, I heard it on MSNBC, but I was already laughing so hard I couldn't laugh any harder.

SPENCER: Republican pollster Scott Rasmussen has Obama up two points in... North Carolina. End times! This guy is fucked. He just lost the election. McCain better pray for a terrorist attack or some shit.

MEGAN: I think he already masturbates to that. I don't think you can pray one-handed.

MEGAN: Good morning! I am struggling for something funny or interesting to say here, so let's just pretend I said something pithy, okay?

SPENCER: God, show some effort, will you? Though you always have something pithy to say. You're pith filled. Talking to you is like screening Revenge Of The Pith. Unlike this asshole.

MEGAN: I had the pith taken out of my by the last half of the bottle of red I drank last night.

SPENCER:

“I’m from Arkansas. I understand why she’s popular…. It’s the job of our side not to attack who she is but to focus on differences in policy.”

MEGAN: Well, now, see, I don't disagree with Clinton, but I'm not the fucking former President of the United States saying it either.

SPENCER: Please no more sir. Enough of this. You're not wrong, substantively. But you really ought to come to terms with the fact that you are no longer in a position to hector the Democratic Party on strategy. Notice that the comment implicitly presumes the Democrats are attacking Palin's character, which is a key GOP meme right now. And you know what Bill Clinton was great at, throughout the 90s? Attacking his opponents' characters.

MEGAN: Right, the full article makes mention of the fact that it's echoing Karl Rove's advice, which is not something I like to hear said about Bill Clinton. The great thing about Clinton used to be that he could do it without getting caught doing it.

SPENCER: Yes, Bill Clinton never got caught doing anything. Anyway.

MEGAN: Well, except that one thing that one time...

SPENCER: Let's not waste any time: Steve Schmidt is shanking the New York Times! And Politico's Ben Smith! And soon Marc Ambinder! You're next, whore.

MEGAN: Steve Schmidt can come and get me! I will be a partisan on the rag, which is way worse than "a partisan rag".

SPENCER: Sridhar Pappu and I were tossing this around in our office: clearly this is a cynical move to rally troglodyte-cons who for some reason feel threatened by a fucking newspaper. Blah blah blah that's obvious. But when you're really the sort of politician those troglodyte-cons embrace and identify with, you don't need to sound the media-bias alarm. Like Bush never did. Palin never does. Dole and Bush Senior were the ones who whined about the press. It comes from a position of weakness, exposing itself like a twisted Foucaultian undercurrent. No?

MEGAN: Well, Cheney did call a reporter an asshole on mike, I think that was probably better than screaming about media bias. I honestly think it makes them look really stupid, especially when they didn't do it when the Times was all intimating that he was boinking the lobbyist. Now they're biased? Please. Even George Will is attacking McCain right now.

SPENCER: No no no, they absolutely did. Rick Davis put out a huge fundraising letter that represented the campaign's first opportunity in 2008 for McCain to make a serious pitch for troglodytecons. They've been laying the groundwork to get rid of the sense on the right that McCain has always been the media's candidate. If I'm not mistaken, they rejected the NYT's endorsement. My personal favorite part in Ben Smith's piece is this cameo from tittyboy Michael Goldfarb:

One McCain aide, Michael Goldfarb, said Politico was “quibbling with ridiculously small details when the basic things are completely right.”

Hahahahahahaha! I remember when Goldfarb's still-employers at the Weekly Standard were harping on that line about CBS's Bush-National Guard fabrication-story being "fake but accurate."

MEGAN: Well, they have criticisms! That the criticisms themselves are flat-out lies doesn't mean the spirit of the criticisms are wrong!

SPENCER: Speaking of ample-bosomed gentlemen on the right, we should probably discuss the latest moment of incandescent grace from Jonah Goldberg

MEGAN: I think Jonah Goldberg should stop buying up all the nice bras in my size.

SPENCER: What bra-buying tips would you offer him? I'm serious. This is potentially lifechanging for the poor fellow.

MEGAN: If he's looking for a supportive garment, he should make sure to get the appropriate strap size and avoid demi-cups and balconette bras. Otherwise, he'll look like his boobs are about to spill out everywhere, which is pretty much why I buy exclusively demi-cup bras. That, and the ability to fool my eyes about their size if there isn't enough material to cover all of my breasts.

SPENCER: But do you think pieces like this — wherein observations of racist intimations become indicators of a deeper-seated racism — result from, say, poor back support?

MEGAN: I think that, really, the poor back-support is less problematic than the weight pulling on the muscles on the front of his chest. Only that painful sensation you get from too much jiggling would cause Jonah Goldberg to completely exonerate any potential racists in the Republican party by pointing out that there are racists everywhere! Including in the Democratic party! Well, ho-kay, Jonah, you caught us. Racism is a problem in this country. Also, I think the earlier part of his article in which he says it isn't why people are not going to vote for Obama but then admits that it is, that's totally from feeling sad watching them droop. Gravity's a bitch.

SPENCER: Just a few moments of Googling resulted in such beautiful moments in rightwingery as this:

You: a racist who is not planning to vote.
Me: a guy who thinks this country will be worse off if Obama is elected
This comment is for you! Perhaps you won’t vote, but Oprah and her followers will.
You might decide to sit out the election, but Sharpton and his followers won’t.

Um, what?

MEGAN: Yes, I am a huge follower of Al Sharpton. Well, there was that time at the DNC when I followed him to try to get a picture, but he was walking really fast so I gave up following him.

SPENCER:

You might be too busy to vote for McCain, but 85-90% of blacks will vote for Obama.
Get your lazy racist scum of the earth butt out there and vote for McCain. Why? Because it is best for America. Is McCain perfect? NO! Is Obama evil, or bad, or would he be a rotten President? Nope. Obama is a liberal. That’s my agenda. I don’t want some liberal partisan hack from the Chicago political machine to run this great country. Will he ruin it? Nah. It would take more than one man to ruin this country, but we will be worse off with him as Obama as President, in my opinion. So vote. Everybody who is not a racist hates you, and ignores you, so I am reaching out to you and asking you to vote for John McCain for President

How brave of this fellow! He clearly was too modest to accept such accolades, so he posted this anonymously.

MEGAN: Bravo, good sir! Racists have voting rights too! Unless they've been to prison.

SPENCER: Here's my favorite part:

To our liberal and Democrat friends and readers: Shut up. Don’t even complain about this comment.

MEGAN: Oh, well, I feel pwned.

SPENCER: Jonah, is that you? Don't make me hunt down any IP addresses!

MEGAN: Are you sad you aren't enjoying everything that Minnesota has to offer?

SPENCER: My knowledge of MPLS is limited to two things: the bands on Profane Existence and the account of the Hennepin County prison/detox system that I read about in The Night Of The Gun. One thing I wondered, though: did Joe Lieberman look worse on the closed-circuit feed you saw him on? Because he looked surprisingly good in HD.

MEGAN: I didn't see him on closed-circuit TV, I saw his ass from the media stands and his face on one of the really big screens. From what I could tell, he looked much less pale and tragic than normal, which I'm going to guess means he either secretly stood in line at Invesco or the GOP has better makeup artists than he normally uses. He sounded exactly the same. Like, he sounded like the imitation they did of him talking on the phone to Ron Klain in Recount.

SPENCER: On the drive to the Denver airport, me and some of the FDL dudes were PRAYING for Lieberman to get the VP nod so we could reprise Joe's greatest hits. But this guy defies parody. Do you remember the part where he called Obama an "eloquent young man"? Tell me that isn't racist euphemism.

MEGAN: It totally was, but I spent the whole time going, man, What Would Zell Miller Have Said. Zell knew how to bring a brand of GOP-inspiring crazy that Joementum will never be able to touch. And he wouldn't have gone with some mealy-mouthed encoded racial reference either. But that's so like Lieberman, to stick the shank so slowly in your back that you almost don't feel it.

SPENCER: I saw Hadassah sitting next to Cindy, and she probably knows something about not feeling it.

MEGAN: Please, let us vow here and now to work as many dick jokes as possible into today's Crappy Hour.

SPENCER: But did you notice how he used that line about how you'll always know where McCain stands? That was Bush's closing line against Kerry. If ever there was a milemarker on the road to Joe Lieberman's descent into embarrassing crank, it's that right there. Another question: who could possibly be inspired by that speech? Who even watched till the end? Who thought that the only man capable of following spit-hot-fire Fred Thompson was Joe Lieberman? Actually that's three questions, but you get the gist.

MEGAN: Why did we have to listen to all the various degrees of torture McCain underwent? To make us empathize more with him once we were tortured ourselves? I did think it really strange that they ended on Lieberman, though less so when I read this morning that Joe was really intended to be the nominee but everyone talked McCain out of it at the last minute.

SPENCER: That was the least self-aware moment of the convention. That crowd has spent four years cheering the torture of hundreds-if-not-thousands of detainees in the GWOT and bravely standing up for the constitutional principle that Bush can torture, like, whoever he wants. A convention with a sense of irony — or maybe just shame — would have soft-peddled that. I imagine that the 2020 nominating convention of the Neo-Baath Party will feature something similar

Some of Ahmed's fellow Abu Ghraib inmates are here tonight. Stand up! Stand up! We honor your service! Ya Iraq!
While they waterboarded Marwan at an undisclosed prison and asked him for names of the members of a terrorist group he didn't belong to, Marwan just recited the names of the Manchester United midfielders from 1970 on! (...and Bush had them all detained.)

MEGAN: Oh, God, yeah, I don't know if you could hear it on TV, but every time the crowd started chanting "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" I cringed a little. The shouted it every time the surge came up. I was seated next to a German reporter and I cringed a little and hoped she'd been at the DNC because I didn't want that to be her impression of our jingoistic little nation.

SPENCER: It's like how Rick Davis said bluntly that "this election is not about issues." Well fucking obviously when your agenda has been decisively refuted by the cold hand of reality. All that's left is treacly videos about pledging allegiance to the flag and comparing "the angry left" to North Vietnamese torturers.

MEGAN: You should've seen the standing ovation that line got, by the way. Also, if you didn't see the Reagan tribute video, you really missed something. It was all about how much he loved his wife and shit. Also, he saved this country! I heard one reporter openly snort at that assertion. I love being in the press box sometimes. In Denver, everyone was super quiet (or maybe it was just the section I was in), but here people are sort of milling around and talking to one another and stuff. Possibly because they released the full texts of all the speeches relatively early.

SPENCER: Fucking liberal reporters. I wonder what would happen if the reanimated corpse of Ronald Reagan asked a room full of anti-gay Republicans for a blowjob. Which principle is the controlling one?

MEGAN: One blow job doesn't make you gay. Liking it makes you gay... Oh, wait, never mind.

SPENCER: OK I need to wrap this up fairly soon so I can go to Glover Park and beg the Afghan consulate for a same-day visa in order to make my flight tomorrow to Afghanistan.

MEGAN: I am so excited for you which is only slightly tinged with worry for my friend...

SPENCER: I'll be totally fine. Well, presuming my body armor arrives at my office later today. If not, then you can worry.

MEGAN: I will be keeping my fingers crossed for that then. I'm guessing it's not something I could pick up here at an Army-Navy story and overnight to you...

SPENCER: Yeah, if only. Also, do you know that I can't figure out how to make a satellite modem work? I've emailed some people and am a bit reassured, and I'll talk to the guy at Inmarsat customer service today, but Jesus I'd feel a lot more comfortable if I could make this alchemy happen. This shit is heavy as hell and I'll be at an elevation higher than Denver. And this time without alcohol.

MEGAN: Dude, I'll stockpile the bourbon for your triumphant return to Washington... and to Crappy Hour.

SPENCER: I now have something to live for.

SPENCER: My God... As of now, ladies, I am in control here, in Crappy Hour, pending the return of Moe Tkacik. If something came up, I would check with Megan, of course.

MEGAN: It would help if I weren't sitting right here, and if you had access to the publishing system...

SPENCER: Curses... and so ends the coup.

MEGAN: Foiled again! If it wasn't for you nosy kids...

SPENCER: So hi from the back seat of my friends Michael and Dafna's Volkswagen Rabbit, careening south on 95, nearing the Susquehanna.

MEGAN: Yes, enough Scooby Doo references, this is totally a place for adults to talk about adult things. Like Paris Hilton.

SPENCER: John McCain is, at this point, the mother of all ironies: Kathy Hilton complaining about "a complete waste of the country's time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs." Kathy, your family could hire them all; you could house all the Katrina victims who still need housing.

MEGAN: On the other hand, you think someone in McCain's ad department could've called over to the fundraising department and said, hey, um, are these prominent Hollywood Republican friends of his donors? Or gone to Open Secrets.

SPENCER: Notice how the woman in the Times' photo is named Laura Hilton
yeah, really — Rick Davis needs that $4,600 pretty badly! Also, how could you not think about the consequences of pointing out that your candidate is funded by Paris Hilton's family?

MEGAN: They were probably too busy trying to fit as many Antichrist references in thirty seconds as possible without tipping off the non-Rapture contingent.

SPENCER: OK, please explain this to your Jewboy interlocutor
it seems pretty disgusting — every quote is out of context, for instance — but I am surely missing a ton of scriptural dogwhistles.

MEGAN: Okay, so, there's this thing called The Rapture. You're excluded. Apparently, all the "good" Christian evangelicals of the world (so, I'm excluded, too) will be brought directly to God as soon as the Antichrist takes over the world. Someone, somewhere decided Obama is the Antichrist, aka, the harbinger of the Rapture.

SPENCER: Ahhhhh see, and in the Left Behind series, the Antichrist is a Romanian. How diabolical of Obama! We always knew the Devil would have a smooth tongue.

MEGAN: So, technically my understanding is that evangelicals should actually, like, exalt his candidacy and vote for him because the Rapture is a good thing, but I'm sure I'm missing something like their actual belief that they themselves will be Raptured because God knows what they're doing behind closed doors (but, in one case at least, it involved two wetsuits, a butt dildo and auto-erotic asphyxia). But, yes, "The One" is actually "The Antichrist" and not the Messiah. Or the Highlander, for that matter. I wonder whatever happened to that guy.

Oh, nothing, never mind.

SPENCER: Now, if McCain wanted to say that Obama is the Devil he wouldn't just use the booming-voice narrator and the churchy (to my ignorant ears) guitar music in the background, he'd hire the guy who narrate the last track on Integrity's Humanity Is The Devil album.

MEGAN: But, see, the Antichrist isn't the devil exactly. It's different somehow. This is where the fundies lose me too.

SPENCER: Another tin ear for McCain! White dudes will vote for the Highlander.

MEGAN: Yes, totally, Obama needs to start going to cons.

SPENCER: The Antichrist is the Devil's handmaiden or something? Whoa, Baltimore tunnel.

MEGAN: Obama is sucking the devils dick!

SPENCER: I may lose connectivity.

MEGAN: That's cool, I'll wait the whole 3 minutes.

SPENCER: So the Devil is Larry Sinclair, then you know, speaking of things white people like: Barack Obama.

MEGAN: I believe the deal is that the whole thing is pre-ordained anyway, so it's not like Good and Evil, but it's all God's plan or some shit. He is pretty! He's going on vacation to Hawai'i soon, so there will be new topless pictures for us!

SPENCER: My ex-boss has this great catch in today's WaPo story:

Obama's advantage is attributable largely to overwhelming support from two traditional Democratic constituencies: African Americans and Hispanics. But even among white workers — a group of voters that has been targeted by both parties as a key to victory in November — Obama leads McCain by 10 percentage points, 47 percent to 37 percent, and has the advantage as the more empathetic candidate.

So my Q to you: is there any demographic group that can decide the election that McCain leads among?

MEGAN: What I like is that those people don't think either candidate will make a bit of difference in their day-to-day lives! And people say they're not smart. I think he does better among rich old white people. That's, like, Florida.

SPENCER: But this is a GOP goldmine demographic that knows everything about McCain and nearly nothing about Obama, and they're going for Obama hard. That should be a nice campaign palliative now that I'm reading that Obama's lead is gone in the Gallup poll.

MEGAN: And McCain is now vetting Eric Cantor for the Jewish vote and to keep Virginia red. Obama's up in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, though.

SPENCER: That right there is a testimonial to the antipathy of the Tribespeople to the GOP. I think Eric Cantor was the nasally kid who ratted me out to the teacher for feeling up a classmate of mine at East Midwood Jewish Center.

MEGAN: By the way, when we were at dinner with Erica at Zengo that time and I was like, dammit, who is that guy? That guy was Eric Cantor.

SPENCER: Was Joe Lieberman not charismatic enough? Oh right, I forgot: We don't like that asshole, either.

Shit, really? That was why our dinner took for-fucking-ever? I'm going to get J Street to destroy him.

MEGAN: Yes, yes it was. Another reason not to like him. Amusingly, McCain operatives, I mistook him for someone that works for Blunt because I've never seen him do anything but toady up to Blunt. And because he looks 15.

SPENCER: Speaking of blunt, as in unsubtle, and FUCKING IDIOTIC, an Obama ad more annoying than the Encyclopedia Britannica ad with that longhair douche. You know what a campaign getting attacked for elitism needs? More Gwyneth Paltrow.

MEGAN: Also, she's the worst actor in the whole fucking commercial. It's like she thinks she's talking to learning disabled children.

SPENCER: Right, I keep expecting her to tell me that my 50-cent donation will make all the difference to Aspergers' sufferers.

MEGAN: I mean, these are Americans who actually bothered learning to speak another language. Except for her, I mean, she's just in London.

SPENCER: And who approved the two assholes who are like "I'll be voting from Paris!" "Me too!"?

MEGAN: Someone in London, probably.

SPENCER: "...and I'll be eating arugula out of my gay husband's butt on a bed of shredded Bibles! We're just in the next Arrondisement!"

MEGAN: Speaking of arugula, Honest Tea is the new arugula, and that's just unfair because Honest Tea rocks. Just because McCain is from Arizona doesn't mean the rest of us should be forced to drink that swill.

SPENCER: We part company: Arizona ice tea got me through junior high, along with Snapples and Quarterwater.

MEGAN: And now that you're not 12, which would you rather drink?

SPENCER: What kind of elitist would rather drink ice tea that doesn't come from a powder?

MEGAN: Or lettuce that isn't iceberg?

SPENCER: Women of loose morals like yourself, clearly.