• If you weren't already aware, voter turnout is really high. That's led to some scattered problems, which will be chronicled after the jump. [Washington Post]
• In the mean time, the fucking Supreme Court heard the fucking case about fucking swearing on fucking TV. They didn't say "fuck" once, so I felt like someone had to. [Washington Post]
• A lot of people in California who really love each other rushed to get married today in case a bunch of small-minded, easily-led voters decide to make it illegal today for them to do so tomorrow. [NY Times]
• Joe Lieberman "fears" for the future of this country if the Democrats gain a filibuster-proof majority today, and has vowed to join with Republicans to filibuster anything they want to show his contempt for his constituents and the Americans who decided they were okay with a Democratic Senate. [Think Progress]

• Actor Tim Robbins was the most prominent victim of the ironically-named Help America Vote Act's mandated purges of voter rolls today. Being rather well-informed, he took his ass to court to force the city of New York to allow him to vote in the regular fashion, rather than provisionally since it would have gotten discarded. Can we just agree HAVA needs to be revisited next year? [NY Times]
• Rudy and Judith Nathan Giuliani apparent had no such difficulties and even got to cut in line. [Village Voice]
• Some people in Detroit waited 4-5 hours to vote. [CNN]
• Ditto in St. Louis. [CNN]
• A bunch of people in New Mexico that requested absentee ballots never got them and were told to show up and cast provisional ballots, as though if one needed to vote absentee that was a possibility. [CNN]
• At one Florida voting site, they had one machine to accommodate all the voters. Yeah, it was in a predominately African-American neighborhood. [Huffington Post]
• There were big problems with broken machines and a lack of paper ballots in Richmond, Virginia today, too. [Huffington Post]
• In Indiana, the GOP violated a judges orders and tried to challenge the voting status of foreclosed-upon voters. [Huffington Post]
• Some voters in Ohio were forced to cast provisional ballots (which might or might not be counted) because poll workers screwed up and thought that the address on the license had to match the address on the registration. It doesn't. [CNN]
• A 92-year-old woman in Texas cast her ballot from an ambulance outside the polling place when her absentee ballot didn't arrive. [CBS]
• Joe the Motherfucking Plumber went to the wrong polling place and tried to good ol' "Do you know who I am?" when he got stopped for speeding this week. Fuck. Off. Dude. [Wonkette]
• Joining JTMP in fucking off should be P.U.M.A. co-founder Will Bower. [CNN]
• Not that she swears, but 114-year-old Gertrude Baines, the daughter of former slaves who voted for Obama today, probably shares that sentiment. [LA Times]

• Sarah Palin feels the press should be forced to report about her in a certain way to avoid abridging her First Amendment rights. Add the actual First Amendment to Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution on the list of Constitutional amendments Sarah Palin is planning when she is Empress of America. [Huffington Post, U.S. Constitution]
• If you needed any other reasons to vote against McCain-Palin, Politico's list of Cabinet officials should help. It's got Dick Armitage for Secretary of State, Lindsay Graham for Secretary of Defense, Rudy Giuliani for Attorney General (!) and Randy "Biggest Asshole In the Universe" Scheunemann as National Security Advisor. And you thoughT Palin was a bad pick. [Politico]
• By contrast, their list of potential Administration officials for Obama reads like a liberal's wet dream. [Politico]
• Hey, while you weren't looking, Bush has been sneaking around trying to push controversial deregulation to "ease" consumer and environmental protections. Fuck. [Washington Post]

• Former Reagan Chief of Staff-turned-lobbyist Ken Duberstein jumped on the Hope train, citing Colin Powell's endorsement and the fact that "Even at McDonalds, you're interviewed three times before you're given a job." as his reasons. Oh, snap. [Politico]
• Larry Eagleburger today got a first hand experience with what McCain doesn't consider torture after saying that Palin would only be "adequate" if she had to play President. His balls will be returned to him shortly by Mark Salter, but his self-respect, well, that ain't ever coming back. [Talking Points Memo]
• Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss — who proved in 2002 that he never had any when he attacked decorated Vietnam veteran and multiple amputee, Senator Max Cleland, for lacking in patriotism — told a group of predominately white voters that they had to get to the polls because "The other folks are voting." Oh, and he didn't even try to pretend he wasn't talking about his African-American constituents, either, not that he probably considers them that. [Huffington Post]
• In other batshit crazy Republican news, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, recent convicted of 7 felony charges stemming from gifts he accepted, went home to Alaska and told everyone he wasn't convicted. Um, I think they have the news up there, Ted. Sarah Palin said so. Looks like someone is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. [Politico]
• Oh, and Senator Liddy Dole's got a new ad attacking oppOnent Kay Hagan's supposed godlessness. I'm guessing she won't be getting a job running a non-partisan, non-profit charity when she hopefully loses. [Firedoglake]

Community Organizers [The Daily Show]

• Noted anti-fur activist has some advice for noted huntress Sarah Palin: "She can suck it." Yet another woman with a legitimate policy disagreement with Sarah Palin. [Huffington Post]
• By the way, Todd Palin's about to break his subpoena cherry, as he's expected to be subpoenaed to testify about his role in TrooperGate. God, if only the Congress could subpoena people to testify about wrongdoing in the Bush Administration! Wait, that's right, they could, but then they wouldn't get their bellies scratched. [Wall Street Journal]
• Once upon a time, in a primary far, far away, John McCain said that former Governor Mitt Romney and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani (pop: 8,000,000, attacked by terrorists in 2001) didn't have enough national security experience to be President. [Huffington Post]

• Unsurprisingly, Sarah Palin's next interview will be with Sean Hannity next week. Apparently, Charlie Gibson wasn't fawning enough. [New York Observer]
• Not that it matters whether he was or not, probably, since McCain's now ahead in the polls for the first time. Apparently, more people think that he is inexperienced than believe that Sarah Palin is. No, for real. [Associated Press]
• Oh, and of course Sarah Palin signed off on the budgets that cut funding for rape kits in Wasilla. [Huffington Post]

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

JASON: Ha. Yes. Central Time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JASON: There was a "policy portion?"

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

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

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

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

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

JASON: And how was Matt Cooper? I guess?

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

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

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

Abercrombie & Fitch
This probably won't shock you: Abercrombie & Fitch is torn between mindless apathy and pure evil. In the past six election cycles only one candidate has managed to crack a thousand in campaign contributions collected from Abercrombie employees' studiously frayed pockets, and that politician would be — you guessed it! — George W. Bush. The Skull & Bones candidate has raised $5,000 in racist classist Abercrombie dollars over the past few cycles, largely thanks to spokesman Tom Lennox. It is the only retailer whose employees have contributed to the Worst Presidency Ever.

Urban Outfitters
Urban Outfitters founder and CEO Dick Hayne is notorious for his support of that weird Pennsylvania senator who brought home his dead baby and became the first politician to become synonymous with butt sex. But the single largest recipient of Urban Outfitters campaign contributions has been Barack Obama, whose $7,400 collected from various executives — perhaps subliminally influenced by those clever T-shirts? — just tops the $7,100 of Dick's dollars that have lined the coffers of Rick Santorum.

J. Crew
J.Crew is your store if you are into uneasy family reunions! CEO Mickey Drexler has donated nearly a hundred grand to Democratic committees alone, while octogenarian founder Arthur Cinader likes lining the coffers of any fucking batshit Republican who bats an eyelash his away. Cinader has donated to Alan Keyes, Sam Brownback and Malcolm Forbes, but his fave is Phil Gramm, who has received $8,000 from him over the years.

Barney's
Barney's is the place to shop if you like avant-garde design and hate Hillary. Employees have donated thousands of dollars to New York politicians over the past few years — $1000 to Charlie Rangel, $4,000 to Chuck Schumer, $3,000 to Rudy — and a mere five Benjamins to Hills. (Though $250 did come from creative director Julie Gilhart, who is like the Karl Rove of fashion trends. Perhaps she likes pantsuits?)

Forever 21
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the store for your blue-collar budget is the biggest supporter of the Hillary Clinton campaign, clocking in at $11,500. Interestingly, two executives also donated a total of $4,000 to Rudy Giuliani's campaign and another $2,300 to Obama. Everyone knows variety = the spice of Forever 21!

• Oh yeah, and Florida too. Wonder if Giuliani has any of those $9.11 donations left to inject into the old guy's campaign coffers? [AP]
  
• Hillary wins Florida too but feminists don't believe in beauty contests...or...um. [Wash Post]
  
• An alternative way to bask in the success of the troop surge this eve, if you have HBO. [Wash Post]
  
• The question isn't whether Gore wants to endorse Obama, but whether he "has the self-control" not to. [NY Mag]
  
• The question isn't whether Carter doesn't find Obama "titillating", but...titillating, really Jim? [WSJ]
  
• Two-month-old in China becomes World's youngest political prisoner! [NYT]
  
• Lynn Spears and her prodigal spawn: like something out of the Redneck Bible! [US Weekly]
  
• Could an individual be more deserving of riches than Corey Delaney? [Reuters]

• Maybe the "wealthy financiers" who stand to collect $500 from the Senate's version of the stimulus package... [Wash Post]
• No one made all those poor people sign up for those risky subprime mortgages...but. [Wash Post]
• Kenya this week: Luos mobbed the streets and looted stores in Kisumu in retaliation for the 19 Luos who died in a house fire set by Kikyu in response to a bus fire set by Luo. "It seems that what started out last month as a political crisis has increasingly turned into a violent ethnic one." [NY Times]
• "Where in the world has one ever seen a nation that erects memorials to immortalize its own shame? Only the Germans had the bravery and the humility..." [IHT]

The Hillartini, you see, is actually just a Cosmo. Says Lotus Lounge, "The drink is pink and feminine, yet strong and bold." Says us: Wha? There are many things that Hillary is. She is surprisingly funny and even a little goofy, on occasion. She has an of old-fashionedness to her. (We heard her say "golly" once. Seriously.) She is wicked smart. But "pink and feminine"? Is it pink just because she's a girl? We think Hillary's more like the kind of girls we are: More like a vodka tonic drinker. Or maybe just some Jack, straight up. But sugary, pink stuff that tastes like the bubblegum scraped off the bottom of a movie theatre chair? No fucking way.

(We do appreciate, however, that they saddled Giuliani with an apple martini. Because that's a total girl drink. And Rudy's a drag queen, after all.)

Hey, is it happy hour yet???

Pick the President at Lotus [NBC]

But Laura can only be thinking, "Well I could be married to Larry Craig." And Suzanne Craig can only be thinking, "Well I guess I could be married to Judi Giuliani. (In some states anyway!) But Hillary has been through the worst, marriage-wise at least, and worked very very hard, to suppress all of it for the good of our country.

In a similar vein, I am now about to order my fourth drink.

That's Heidi Klum and Seal today, somewhere, thanks to X17.

• I woke up late.
  
• Now I know how I will go about never waking up again. [Telegraph]
  
• Some grooms apparently have vaginas. [Daily Mirror]
  
• Which explains why post-partum depression is so very very tough on them. [ABC News]
  
• Science may have found a way to solve Lindsay Lohan. Or maybe just all those coke-addicted mice out there. [Daily Mail]
  
• A rule of thumb for tipping your sperm child: it should be at least as much as the spank bank paid you for the DNA. [NYT]
  
• This is going to totally shock Lula Mae Broadway but I never saw any of Ingmar Bergman's films [Wash Post]
  
• And I won't see anything until after I see the Simpsons movie everyone else saw while I was attending to my drinking problem. [WSJ]

• Rudy Giuliani says the Dems want a "nanny government", and we'd take a Scarlett Johansson-Fran Drescher ticket over Cheney-Bush ANY DAY. [AP]
• Renting: not just for third world uteruses anymore! [Breitbart]
• "Jesus — at what tax rate are your brains forcibly removed?" LOL. [Wonkette]
• Hillary Clinton writes almost like a Sarah Lawrence student.
• Campral absolutely does not work. We're back on excess.

John McCain: The Arizona senator screams Politician 101, with his blue shirt with a red and blue striped tie. The quintessential white guy running for office uniform.

Rudy Giuliani: Rudy's red tie also says he's a white guy running for office. It's also a visual clue that he's a Republican for any of those other Republicans worried that all that crazy NYC liberalism might've rubbed-off on him during that unfortunate mayoral stint. Also, red tie = Christian white dude.

Mitt Romney: Funny, but the former governor of Massachusetts is also a... white Christian dude. But he's a Mormon, mind you, and distinguishes this by going with slightly-alt politician blue as opposed to slightly-conservative red. But it's still one of the two go-to politician tie colors, so we can rest assured that he still doesn't want us to have an abortion.

Sam Brownback: Whoa, Brownback almost threw us for a loop there. The senator from Kansas' tie is neither red nor blue! Thank goodness he's Christian and white or else that green-hued tie might have misled us to believe he's one of those wacky, God-hating, Negro environmentalists!

Tommy Thompson: White shirt, red tie, angry hands: The former governor of Wisconsin is also definitely (just want to hammer this home one more time!) a Christian white dude running for the Republican nomination. The suit and tie alone, we know, just say plain ol' politician, but the angry hands screaming about why we have to rid out country of the evils of gay marriage (you know, as opposed to dependence on foreign oil) totes says "I [Heart] The GOP" even more than an "I [Heart] The GOP" t-shirt would.

Mike Huckabee: The former governor of Arkansas also sports classic blue — but in a subtle pattern! We'd worry that 'pattern' might equate 'Democrat' (if not also, possibly, 'homo' — the gays like patterns, don't they?), but, thankfully, he's a guy who hates Darwin. Sleep safely tonight, Republicans — this man's no fashion fag.

Tom Tancredo: Also known as poor man's Giuliani, the representative from Colorado whose last name (tread lightly, friend, tread lightly) also belies an ethnic heritage is wearing (yawn) a white shirt with (yawn) a red tie and (yawn) a dark suit.

Jim Gilmore: He's the former governor of Virginia. White shirt. Red tie. Dark suit. Christian. White. Male. Gilmore bores us, and we'd like to stop trying to think of something that sets him apart from his fellow candidates (he's even sporting the Republican angry hands, damnit!), but we just can't and would rather go back to watching the Kathy Griffin marathon we TiVo'd. (No, you people don't want to watch with us. Kathy likes gays and hates the war.)

Duncan Hunter: Duncan, Duncan, Duncan; What's with that ambiguously dark tie? If this guy wasn't a [insert obviousness here], that whole "I'm from California" thing + the die would totally yield some major Republican mud-slinging. But whatever, almost no one's ever heard of him anyway.

Ron Paul: Uh, oh, Ron's wearing blue. And he's got some sorta funny pin on his jacket. This can't be helping his fellow Republicans' suspicions that he's actually...a Communist spy. Thank god he didn't wear pink!

1. He wrote a book that begins:

There is no attack on American culture more deadly and more historically dishonest than the secular effort to drive God out of America's public life.

and

2. He is probably running for president.

After the jump, the results of an extensive Nexis search on the loves and — remember this word?? — pecadilloes — of Naughty Newt, the essence of which can be boiled down to: He makes Giuliani look so, so classy. And unfortch, he also hearts Obama!

Discounting that GOPers generally use the term "therapy" as code for "faggotry," Newt practically endorsed Barack Obama last week - "If the country wants therapy, it will vote for Obama" - just cause it gave him a cool excuse to knock Hil. Oh, Hil...

"You can't beat them tactically . . . They're too relentless, they're too well-organized, they have too big a machine and they'll just grind you down," he said.

"If they think [Obama] is a real threat, they'll just grind him up."

Newt called the Contract With America "the first step toward renewing American civilization"

Newt and Callista met once a week for breakfast at the supreme court cafteria.

Kit Gingrich told the Wash Post of Callista: "I liked her from the first time I saw her. This is the first time I can ever remember seeing that Newty is in love." Awwwww!

In 1996 Ted Haggard told Michael Lewis he didn't understand the Gay Pride Parade that under way in Denver. "It's like a Murderers' Pride Parade."

Focus On The Family's James Dobson thinks Ted Haggard can be cured of his faggotry.

Newt Gingrich is a Top 500 Reviewer on Amazon.com, having penned several hundred book reviews for free on the site.

Newt's request to the Archdiocese of Atlanta to annul his SECOND marriage to Marianne Gingrich was made on the grounds that SHE had been married before.

Of the unpopular impeachment trials, Newt told the NYT Mag: "I realized I was out of sync with the culture. This is a culture that is much more open, and has gone through many more experiences, than a person of my age and my background understood." Until Callista bestowed upon him a BJ underneath the Supreme Court cafeteria table!

Vanity Fair's Gail Sheehy has known all about Callista, Newt's fave breakfast companion, for twelve years, since she profiled Newty in a story in which Gingrich BFF Kip Carter also told her Newt would have won a 1974 congressional race "if we could have kept him out of the office, screwing her (volunteer Dot Crews) on the desk."

Jesus fucking Christ.