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.

MEGAN: How are you feeling on this cold Thursday morning?
MOE: I am feeling like shit again, no surprises there. I thought drinking something last night might make me feel better but, ha ha, it didn't! Though I woke up with wine stained teeth.
Britney's been hospitalized. That's the news on CNN. I don't think anything else happened.
Oh wait, there was a debate!
That is only slightly less commonplace than Britney being institutionalized or doing something worthy of being institutionalized I suppose!
MEGAN: britney's soooo obviously more important.
I mean, is there a single thing we don't know about these guys now?
MOE: We don't know WHO'S THE REAL CONSERVATIVE AND WHO'S A BIG POSEUR...There's a decent story about John Edwards' leaning toward Obama. His senior rural strategist Dave "Mudcat" Saunders talks about going home, getting into a fetal position on the bed and "sucking my thumb with my gun" — great image! — before he "gets back out" to make sure Hillary doesn't get the nom.
MEGAN: MUDCAT??? Also,did he have his gun in the other hand I hope? People, don't play with guns.
Also, I don't know Mudcat but now I have a mental image of a Bear in my head, in flannel, crying.
MOE: Here's something else he had to say: "Hillary Clinton has about as much chance of beating John McCain as this Scots-Irish hillbilly has of becoming pope."
His reasoning is that she can never get states Kerry did not get, and I don't think our readers will be surprised that I think he has a fair point.
As candidates go, John McCain is only approximately 4000% stronger than George W. Bush...and it is so easy for her partisans to forget — sooooo easy for them to forget — that Bill always had Ross Perot.
MEGAN: Yeah, I think (like many conservatives do, actually) that once McCain is done running to the Right for the nomination, he'll be back running to the center like he did in 2000.
Which will make it hard for Hillary to pick up a lot of the so-called Reagan Democrats. McCain's problem would be turn-out among Republicans, which would handily be solved by Hillary being the nominee.
But, you know, by saying that we're just revealing our bias, Moe. Also, we're betraying our gender and voting with our genitals. Also, we're misogynists. And we're stupid.
Did I miss anything?
MOE: Sorry, I was just reading this Robert Novak column. It never ceases to amaze me how much ire conservatives have for McCain. I suppose this is because he does not believe in their "unity" crap. But GOD, you always think all conservatives care about is abortion, and then they act like taxes are abortion. No wonder that crazy little gynecologist in Texas has so many fans.
MEGAN: The fiscal conservative religion is the reason I found the entire GOP field hilarious funny for a year. You have the former mayor of NYC (who basically won by being a centrist Democrat), the former governor of Taxachusetts, McCain whose McCain-Feingold bill sends Washington conservatives into paroxysms of hatred, and Huckabee who had the audacity to raise taxes during a budget crisis in which he was constitutionally obligated to balance the budget.
That 's why there was such crazy stupid love for Fred Thompson, and such a groundswell of support at first- it wasn't the whole GOP side loking for an "alternative," it was them looking for someone who was strong on anti-tax issues.
And now they're probably stuck with McCain anyway.
MOE: Right, and NO TIMETABLE FOR WITHDRAWAL. If you like Romney, you risk a timetable, you know!
MEGAN: If we tell them when we're leaving, they'll hide out until we're gone!
!!!
MOE: Which sends all the conservatives into suuuuch paroxysms!!!! Because what if he like, uses this as an excuse to RAISE TAXES?????
MEGAN: OH NOES! Head for the bomb shelter, Mabel!
MOE: Anyway I particularly appreciated how Novak says that over and over again
that McCain told some people that they could TOTALLY expect john roberts type justices from him, but not alito!
Alito wore his conservatism on his sleeve!
And then McCain claims to have FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT THE CONVERSATION
BECAUSE HE'S OLD
but then Novak asked the people to whom he was supposedly talking shit about Alito
and they didn't remember really either
(because they are old)
MEGAN: Novak should talk. I saw him at a cocktail party a couple of weeks ago. Another year, and he's gonna look like Yoda.
MOE: Hahahaha at the end of the column, you're like, Novak, this story is so fucking stupid and convoluted and you cant even keep it straight. Because you're OLD.
MEGAN: Stupid and convoluted, that sums up Novak's writing style to a T.
Speaking of McCain and conservatives, now that he's all cool again, Schwarzenegger is going to endorse him.
Because that's totally helpful among hand-line conservatives.
er, hard-line.
MOE: Okay remember last night when I was drunk and we started going through the Wikipedia entries of Gravel and McCain?
MEGAN: I wasn't sober or anything! But, yes.
(Also, did you have to tell everyone that when we get drunk we Wiki candidates and then IM about it? It makes us sound nerdier than we are).
MOE: Yeah especially since we were talking about the commenters, ahem. But seriously, so yesterday we learned that Mike Gravel is six years older than John McCain and that he is fundamentally awesome, and that John McCain's groomsman was Clinton defense sec. William S. Cohen and his groomsman was Gary Hart. And I think there's something about that; like, when the conservatives express all this hatred for "inside the beltway" republicans, I think they are just jealous bc they never get to be, like, the popular kids sorta?
And the Governator is just going to make them even more pissed off.
Him and John Voight and Rambo.
Is it just me or did you forget Huckabee was still in this race too?
MEGAN: Well, you know, "still in" is a relative term.
He's still running.
I wouldn't call him "in" the race.
MOE: Here's Salon's take on last night's GOP debates: he emboldened front-runner took shots at Romney throughout Wednesday's GOP debate, as if winning seemed less important to him than pissing off his rival.
"As if."
MEGAN: Yeah, that sounds like McCain. He really apparently dislikes Romney and likes fucking with people he dislikes.
MOE: That's a funny thing about McCain. He hates Romney. And I hate Romney, but not as much as McCain hates Romney. And I wonder, what exactly does McCain hate so much about Romney? I think I would go back to the 100 demerits he received at the 27 high schools he went to or whatever. He looks at Romney and sees a simpering pansy who never had a one-night stand, never got into a fight, never talked back to his parents, never gave a shit about being anything but not fucking up, who served his Mormon mission, the most ballsy motherfucking task expected of someone like Mitt Romney, in motherfucking FRANCE. I bet Mitt's tour in France overlapped with McCain's tour in Hanoi. Anyway, it's some deep-seated manhood shit going on there; McCain doesn't think Romney has earned his manhood at all.
MEGAN: Whoa. You totally got my attention there.
I don't understand men and their man-stuff.
MOE: Well I think that's what's going on. And it's funny, because on one hand, I agree and it's exactly what bothers me about Romney — and really all private sector Republicans born into privilege and handed MBAs on a silver platter — that they haven't really earned their viewpoints because they haven't fucking seen anything. And yet, you know, I'm a woman, so it all seems a little ridiculous and over-the-top.
MEGAN: Well, you're one of a very small minority of women to ever actually have a pissing contest, so it doesn't surprise me that you'd have more insight into that than me.
MOE: Hahaha. Well it makes me think back to that thing he said off the cuff to the man in the crowd accusing him of carpetbagging when he was first running for congress in Arizona back in 1982.

Listen, pal. I spent 22 yars in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and iving and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.