What is that, The Secret for the GOP? If we say it's so, we make it so? And he's quoting both Gallup polls and Faux News, meaning: I wasted three minutes of my life on this crap.

However, the health care battle continues to rage onward. As we roll towards reconciliation, all of our lawmakers have their eye on one thing: cost. Attempting to make the bill as cost-effective as possible, the House and Senate are both looking at taxation. But who pays?

Legislation emerging from the House would slap a surtax on upper-income people. But many Democrats, especially in the Senate, fear the political fallout over voting to raise anyone's income taxes.

The most prominent Senate bill would impose a tax on insurance companies that provide expensive policies, sometimes dubbed "Cadillac" plans. But labor unions — a powerful force within the Democratic Party — bitterly oppose the idea,
saying the tax would be passed on to workers in the form of higher premiums or shrunken benefits. [...]

Legislation approved by the chamber's Ways and Means Committee would impose an income tax surcharge of up to 5.4% on individuals who make more than $280,000 and on couples with more than $350,000 annual income.

That, however, did not sit well with centrist Democrats and others from high-cost regions. So House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) has called for raising the bill's thresholds to $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for couples. [...]

A bill being debated in the Finance Committee would impose a 40% excise tax on insurance companies for plans whose cost exceeds $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families.

Proponents argue that such a steep tax would create an incentive for insurance companies and employers to stop providing such expensive plans, thus helping to slow the growth of healthcare costs. And though companies may drop expensive plans, the CBO has said, the proposal nevertheless would raise revenues because it assumes employers who scale back coverage would repay workers by raising salaries or increasing taxable compensation in other ways.

And the battle continues.

In the meantime, here's part of Keith Olbermann's special comment where he illustrates his frustration with health care reform using the tale of his father's journey through the health care system:

The GOP Is Winning The Health-Care Debate [WSJ]
Democrats Face Dilemma On Taxes To Pay For Healthcare [LA Times]

Apparently prostitutes report their income on a 1040 Schedule C, just like I have since I started freelance writing five years ago. Thanks to the Fifth Amendment, they're allowed to avoid incriminating themselves by being vague about what their actual business is — Slate's Brian Palmer says they could write something like "sale of leisure services." But they do have to enter a code for their business — ACORN apparently suggested 711510 ("independent artists, writers, and performers"), which is the same code I use.

Unlike a prostitute, I don't have to worry about balancing the penalty for being caught doing my job against the penalty for reporting income from it (in most states, says Palmer, punishments for tax evasion are stiffer). Nor do I need to know about laws that prevent police from using tax returns as the initial tip in a criminal investigation. But I do have some advice for anyone filing a schedule C — don't report a loss more than two years in a row. The recession may be hitting prostitutes just as hard as it's hitting writers, but if you lose money for a third year, the IRS could determine that having sex is your hobby, not your job — and then your expenses aren't deductible.

If you're a john, though, you could try writing off the money you pay prostitutes as a health expense. A tax attorney recently tried to deduct $100,000 in prosecution and porn expenses as "sex therapy." Unfortunately for him, he lost.

How Do Prostitutes Pay Their Taxes? [Slate]
Tax Court Writes Off Lawyer's Deduction For Prostitutes [Legal Blog Watch]

• Rush Limbaugh has his big-boy britches in a wad over the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court because she and President Obama are racists for thinking themselves not only equal to white people but superior to some...like Rush Limbaugh. By that standard, we are all racist! [Time]

• We're also superior to Larry Summers, who fell asleep during a motherfucking meeting again. [NY Post]
• Current Illinois Senator Roland Burris (surprise!) bought his sinecure from former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich just like everyone suspected he did. [Wall Street Journal]
• Burris is now departing on a tour of - wait for it - Central Illinois. [Associated Press]
• Obama, however, is headed to Sin City to help out Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, despite the fact that Reid will continue to fuck shit up. [LA Times]
• Apparently, the United States is considering a value added tax (VAT). Don't think that means we'll get to stop paying income taxes, though — the point is not to change the system, but raise more revenues. [Washington Post]
• Economists predict the recession will be over by the end of the year. [MSNBC]
• By then, North Korea might actually have re-ignited the Korean War, which actually never technically ended. What else does Kim Jong Il have to do these days? [NY Times]

• If you have been hiding under a rock this weekend, the Obamas got their Portuguese Water Dog, Bo, from the Kennedys, and tons of awwws erupted around the blogosphere. [Washington Post]

• Newt Gingrich thinks you're sorta stupid for caring. [CNN]
• In other news you can't escape, Obama is being congratulated on his first foreign policy victory for the Navy's ability to shoot 3 dudes on a boat because "foreign policy victory" is always equivalent to "dead bodies of non-Americans" and not, say, "getting Iran to agree to nuclear talks" which is what he did last week. [Huffington Post, BBC]
• Rick Warren cancelled his Sunday morning show appearances because he was exhausted from all his lying. [Politico]
• Barack Obama's half-brother, Samson, was denied a visa to Britain because he was charged with sexual assault and fled the country. [Reuters]
• Arizona State University is happy to have the President give its commencement address this year but, like John McCain, has dubbed him too inexperienced to be awarded an honorary degree. Guess John McCain has a few friends at ASU, huh? [Washington Post]
• Obama turned down throwing out the first pitch at today's Washington Nationals home-opener. [Washington Post]
• Ari Fleischer is sick of poor people all being too poor to pay their damn taxes. Pay up, assholes! [Wall Street Journal]
• Republicans are pushing legislation to make sure that people who inherit up to $10 million from their families don't have to keep paying taxes on it. [NY Times]
• Like Democrats, they probably don't care that the banks that got your tax dollars are also raising interest rates and fees because they all use the Congressional Federal Credit Union. [Wall Street Journal]
• Goldman Sachs is using your tax dollars to try to shut down a blogger who is critical of their company. [Telegraph]
• Paul Krugman thinks it's mean to make fun of crazy people, and Republicans are crazy. Paul Krugman obviously wants me to lose my job. [NY Times]
• And not even Rahm Emanuel is mean enough to save it anymore. [Washington Post]
• Today is the White House's annual Easter Egg Roll. Images to come!

MEGAN: It's Friday, and I am sooooo looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow.

LATOYA: You know, I must say, it is really nice to have a four day workweek. There's always a three day weekend. But don't worry — my spot is a non profit, and we're advocating for everyone to have a 4 hour work week! We should succeed in a few years, faster if the economy implodes and we convince businesses that happy, productive employees need Friday off and full benefits.

MEGAN: I like your ideas, but somehow I have this chorus running through my head.

LATOYA: Blows kisses. But I still love you Megan!

MEGAN: I am too grumpy in the morning to love almost anyone. I'll love you, too, at about 11:30.

LATOYA: Whatever — we need to spread some love around. Did you see the news? East Asia is looking to set up a funding block to protect themselves from financial crisis.

MEGAN: Ahh, the sweet siren song of capital controls! Nicolas Sarkozy will probably point to that as a reason to re-think Bretton Woods.

LATOYA:

East Asian nations have pledged to set up an $80bn (£51.2bn; 63.6bn euros) swap scheme by mid-2009 to help protect the region from financial turmoil. The move by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) is backed by South Korea, China and Japan. Countries could borrow directly from the fund in times of emergency, to boost liquidity. The meeting comes as 43 European and Asian leaders meet in China to discuss how to tackle the financial crisis.

See, this is why we need friends. Rugged individualism isn't going to put 80bn in a pot for us to share. Where the hell is the coalition of the willing? Can we get some help?

MEGAN: Isn't it starting to seem like rather than try to prevent the inevitable from happening — and rather ineffectively — we should start planning for how to get out of it? Like, put some of our money toward that?

LATOYA: It's like Dubya read How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, thinking it was Carnegie's book.

MEGAN: The coalition of the willing told us to go fuck ourselves about the time that McCain declared diplomatic war on Spain (if not far earlier).

LATOYA: One would think it's time to reevalaute how we — as a government and as a nation — view money, investments, solvency, humans and capital.

MEGAN: Workers are a fundamental of the American economy, and they are strong. Strong enough, one hopes, to survive unemployment and a recession, but since they'll still be strong we can totes not call it that. It's a mental recession, for a nation of whiners that are nonetheless fundamental and strong.

LATOYA: That's a lot of strength there. But, umm, can we drop the bullshit for a second.

MEGAN: Is that allowed? It's a Presidential campaign.

LATOYA: See, unlike a maverick (which I learned from my friend Alyssa Quart is an unbranded calf), I am a patriot. I shocked the hell out of my friends by admitting this — they wanted to put me in rehab.

MEGAN: You only love the Fake America, though.

LATOYA: But I really do love my country. And I do believe that America is destined for greatness, if we can stop letting asswipes who fear every little thing stay in charge.

MEGAN: Well, then this might make you happy: the GOP is expecting to lose between 11 and 23 House seats, including Bachmann.

LATOYA: Courtney (of Feministing) has this cool interview on Alternet with Deborah Stone who wrote The Samaritan's Dilemma: Should Government Help Your Neighbor?. I think this interview gets at part of the reason why the GOP is imploding. Basically put, this mess isn't working. I know no one wants to pay more taxes. I sure don't, and Joe the Plumber isn't gonna no matter what. But seriously — an educated workforce with basic needs taken care of benefits everyone.

MEGAN: It's an interesting argument, actually. Adam Smith argued that the market and competition fostered trust and interdependence, and that's the basis of a lot of capitalist/democratic theory. But the way this has played out, you sorta gotta wonder about whether that's true. Even economists recognize the value of social goods, though conservatives like to forget it and whine about eliminating the Department of Education.

LATOYA: And with as much money America has, it's shameful that so many of us working (fake or real) American citizens have to hustle and scratch for the basics — and for what? Yeah, Adam Smith's work gets so perverted sometimes. They just pick the parts they like (endless consumption!) and jettison the parts they don't (accountability!) The interview gets really good here:

CEM: You argue that conservative leaders — especially Reagan — have convinced American voters that interdependence is weak and shameful and that rugged individualism is realistic. You also show the ways in which joyful interdependence plays out around us constantly in our personal lives. Why, given our everyday experiences of altruism, did we take to the notion that it was weak writ large?

DS: Partly, I think, the conservative notion of freedom (not having to do anything you don't choose to do) taps into the painful truth of human development. Each of us grows from a helpless, dependent and powerless creature to a reasonably competent and independent adult with a high degree of autonomy. From our teen years on, we savor that freedom from adult control, even as we watch our elders sometimes become frail and revert to childlike dependence. Perhaps that's why it's easy for leaders to evoke terror and shame in us by speaking of dependence.

Partly, too, our culture celebrates individual achievement. Even team sports hype their MVP awards. From the time we're born, when our parents get our Apgar scores of infant health, we are constantly subjected to measures of our individual merits — athletic abilities, intellectual abilities, job performance and financial accumulations. Schools emphasize individual accomplishment, and teachers punish collaboration as "cheating." When parents, schools, employers and others reward people for individual achievement, this way of thinking pushes interdependence into the background of everyone's consciousness. We begin to believe that individuals can do it all on their own if they try hard enough, and we lose sight of all the ways people get help all the time.

MEGAN: Yeah, I haven't lived at home or been financially supported by my parents since I was 18, and even then I had to buy my own shit with the money I could make off of umpiring and temping.

LATOYA: Right — so I don't want to hear that try hard shit. I did. And I do well for myself. But goddamn it, we need more.

MEGAN: Plenty of people try hard and still don't get much of anywhere. And some people don't try at all and get to go places you and I will never be.

LATOYA: Exactly. Like the Real Housewives of ATL.

MEGAN: I was having this conversation over the weekend about my grad school, which was chock full of people from money, many of whom had never gotten a paycheck. And I was working 2 internships — one paid and one unpaid — to make enough money to pay rent and have stuff on my resume that wasn't "Assistant Systems Administrator," so I was always going to class in business clothes (from Marshalls, mostly) because I was going to or coming from work. And I found out later that everyone just thought I was fancy — it didn't occur to people that I was working.

LATOYA: Yeah, some people really don't understand that you can't just ask your parents for money to cover things sometimes because your folks don't have it.

MEGAN: Many of those people have way more money than I can imagine, and it's not because they had bootstraps.

LATOYA: And a lot of people in power willfully shut their eyes to this. We're not saying "take money from the ungrateful rich and redistribute it to the deserving poor." That's a load of fucking bullshit. We're saying, if people with means chip in a bit more and help out those with less, we will all be far better off.

MEGAN: Also, it's a progressive tax system, motherfuckers, it actually exactly means that if you make more money, you're supposed to pay more taxes. (Sorry, I finally saw the "I'm Joe the Plumber" commercial last night and nearly threw my beer at the TV when that came up)

LATOYA: The fate of a nation falls to all of us — not just those with means. And so if we only consider the needs of those with means, while blindly hoping that one day we will have more means and be rich, we have put ourselves in a precarious position. I'm so over this fake class war though.

MEGAN: I'm over wars in general.

LATOYA: Not the stratification of wealth — that's real — but the manufactured Joe the Plumber bullshit. Luckily for us, it appears that the modern conservative movement is cannibalizing itself so maybe we can have a real conversation about these issues once the election is over with.

MEGAN: Also, it's a little ironic that a conservative talk radio station collected money from listeners to pay his back taxes. Apparently, it IS patriotic to pay more in taxes to help others, as long as it's a white dude who makes $250,000 a year.

LATOYA: See, look at that — a classic example of tribalism, right there. Where's Pat Buchanan's outrage over that? Oh wait, I forgot — it's only tribalism when someone else is doing it. I do hope the GOP implodes and recreates though. You can't have a debate with the willfully stupid and all the smart conservatives are kind of just drifting right now.

MEGAN: Pat Buchanan's outrage is reserved for Colin Powell.

LATOYA: It's like they can't believe what's happening either. (Oh, and like Colin Powell gives a shit what Pat Buchanan thinks. That mofo needs to sit down. The only reason I tolerate him is because he is wealth of comedy for Rachel Maddow.)

MEGAN: It's the fundamental problem with the coalition they built, and with the voters they've encouraged this year. They are the know Know-Nothing party.

LATOYA: Yeah - look at this Jonah Goldberg douchnozzle.

MEGAN: Fucking Jonah Goldberg needs to stop wearing too-tight lace thongs, because they are obviously riding up and cutting off the blood to his brain.

LATOYA: Let's revisit the obvious here. People who aren't affected by racism don't need to comment on when it is or isn't happening? How the fuck would you know?

MEGAN: Well, it's unfair to say that Jonah is unaffected by racism, since he's a racist. It affects him daily.

LATOYA: No, he affects other people with his abject ignorance.

MEGAN: Oh, but dontcha know, racism is just a "false memory."

Instead, Obama has set off a case of full-blown race dementia among precisely the crowd that swears Obama is leading us out of the racial wilderness. Rather than shrink, the tumor of racial paranoia is metastasizing, pressing down on the medulla oblongata or whatever part of the brain that, when poked, causes one to hallucinate, conjure false memories and write astoundingly insipid things.

We're all just paranoics, and we should sit down, shut up, smile and pretend that everything in America is hunky-dory. This, however, is the most blindingly stupid and offensive line of the piece: "[Barack Obama] explicitly chose to have a racial identity when he didn’t have to..."

LATOYA: I've been searching my site for that story where the dude burned a cross on someone's lawn and his mom tried to argue that it wasn't racially motivated or that time when we had to post about racial code words since blacks were getting called "reggins" at work (that's nigger, backwards, for those of y'all still sleeping) but it's all there. All our stuff on identity is there, it is obvious that racism isn't a problem that goes away by people not talking about it.

MEGAN: All not talking about it does is allow people like Jonah Goldberg to not get called out for being racist.

LATOYA: When has that ever worked? Can I ignore my fucked up credit and tell a creditor that my BoA bill was in the past and we all need to move on? No — we have to deal with that shit. And the sooner people like Jonah Goldberg shut the fuck up and get out of our way, the better.

MEGAN: Hey, so, did you go to or host some awesome debate-watching party as befits a DC denizen? I mostly cracked a bottle of wine, ordered in Thai food and blogged from my sofa bed with Anna on one side of me and her husband snorting on the other every time Palin failed to answer a question.

KAY: Well, my work (the Center for American Progress) hosted a debate watching party for staff, but I opted for one filled with bloggers instead.

MEGAN: So were things broken? Was there lots of shouting? I blog in near-silence, it's very monastic. But I know I'm weird like that.

KAY: There was an abundance of sarcasm. Remember, this is the same group of people that will likely dress up as a combination of comic book characters and political puns for Halloween.

MEGAN: Halloween-wise, I'm still stuck in adolescence when I wasn't allowed to dress as anything sexy and instead found this amazing/horrifying red velveteen Ren-Fairey queen-like bridesmaid's dress for $2.50 and went as Lady Macbeth for like 3 years in a row. The last time I went all out for a costume, I was Madonna, circa "Express Yourself." Anyway, so, the debates. Do you think people noticed when she didn't answer questions and kept talking about oil?

KAY: Well, she also said that she wasn't going to answer the questions:

And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.

MEGAN: I know! I can't even really raise my eyebrows, but they went up at that! I was like, can she do that? Can't Gwen Ifill be like, no, you have to answer the question?

KAY: That was the closest thing I've ever seen to a candidate just say "fuck you" to the moderator.

MEGAN: I mean, and if anyone was going to tell Gwen Ifill to go fuck herself, you would have thought it would be Cheney, after she told him to keep it to 30 seconds in 2004 against Edwards when he was trying to defend Halliburton.

KAY: Right, if Cheney can restrain himself and Palin can't that really says something.

MEGAN: But at least when she tells Pat Leahy to go fuck himself, she'll toss her hair, smile, wink at Arlen Specter over his shoulder and saunter off. And the press will think it's cute. She'll have an aide/hype man with her at all times so that when she does it, he can press play on the boom box and she'll walk off to the strains of "Barracuda." Because, otherwise, it would all be for naught.

KAY: Right. But for all that prep work, it appears that Biden still blew her out of the water. I guess the point was that she just didn't look horribly unprepared, only minorly.

MEGAN: Oh, true, although at a couple of points I, too, thought she was arranging her cue cards with talking points because that's the only way some of her answers made sense. I really got the sense that, short of reading talking points off of cue cards and an ability to arrange them in some kind of order, she wasn't able to effectively segue between thoughts/talking points for answers to questions that she didn't have prepared answers for. But even so, the CBS poll didn't show as stark a win for Biden as the CNN one.

KAY: True, it's always hard to say how much stock to put in these assessment polls. It's always hard to say how "uncommitted" the voters they poll are.

MEGAN: I know, I never feel like I'm uncommitted by the summer. I'm usually uncommitted in the primaries, just because I sort of like underdogs and don't have the energy to care that much, but generally speaking, I've done my research by now even when I'm not writing about it for work.

KAY: I'm always astonished when you talk to people and they seem to say, "I don't really know that much about candidate X" as if they are powerless to do anything to solve this problem. It's called the Internet, people! Use it!

MEGAN: I think, though, that some of this stuff is really hard to wade through. Like on health care or taxes, how many people do their own taxes or buy their own health insurance? So you can read a 1 page or a 3 page white paper on either one and it's full of pablum and platitudes and you come away having no idea how those plans will affect you personally. Like, that's why the war differences are a stark contrast. That's why, at least in this case, it's really easy to explain to people why John McCain's health care "plan" sucks. It was actually pretty cool last night to hear Biden shred it both effectively and more or less correctly inside of 45 seconds in a way I felt like real people could understand if they were listening. You very rarely get down to that level of making stuff understandable for real people in politics.

KAY: Oh it's definitely valuable to have people listen to the debates. But there's also tons of analysis on each of the candidates' plans out there. McCain's health care "plan" is a good example. The campaign released it more than a year ago, and it was only until recently that people are starting to realize that he proposes taking insurance premiums out of post-tax dollars instead of pre-tax ones like they are now. And even if he gives you a tax credit on your premiums, because everyone's on the individual market costs would skyrocket within a few years so that the tax credit is virtually useless. This stuff is all out there. I know politics seems intimidating, but there are tons of great resources out there now to keep people informed about this stuff, even if they know nothing about it.

MEGAN: I mean, I wrote about it months ago in order to contrast Hillary's plan with Obama's and then I stuck McCain's plan in there for good measure. And I can tell you, that tax credit thing is vintage Douglas Holtz-Eakin (i.e., from McCain's tax guy, NOT his health care guy) because most conservative economists think the problem with the health care system is the fact that your employers gives you health insurance and so it's not a perfect market-based system. And, in their mind, if you bought your own health care rather than being part of your employer's risk pool, you would be more frugal with your health care choices and the market would operate better. OF COURSE they forget that it means that lots of people would go without health insurance, be unable or unwilling to pay and foolishly avoid the doctor for too long, driving up health care costs (since preventative care and early treatment are less expensive than catastrophic care), but, after all, they're just economists. It works on paper, right? And that's what America needs right now, better economic models.

KAY: It's so true. We should just forget about doctors and just send people to economists when they're sick. That'll fix the problem, right?

MEGAN: Well, if we're all contagious, it'll probably solve the problem with economists, anyway.

MEGAN: So, the following things should not be mixed: champagne, mai tais, rum & cokes, random shots, tequila and whatever else I drank last night. I was so dehydrated when I woke up this morning that it was hard to brush my teeth.

SPENCER: (Autoreply) only if you're Megan

Hahahaha my away message actually gains a new context thanks to what you just wrote. I was in bed by 10:30 and feel fantastic!

MEGAN: Are we deliberately alternating hangovers? Should we?

SPENCER: That's an interesting experiment. Kind of like a cap and trade system? The objective is to limit the world's aggregate hangovers by creating a market for them. Yet, as we all know, markets fail, and fail epically.

MEGAN: Yes, I believe WaMu shareholders are finding that out.

SPENCER: And their failure can yield political failure that also attains epic proportions, yielding spectacles like this:

In the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”
Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know.”

Holy shit! You wonder if Paulson started singing Boyz II Men.

MEGAN: That would've been kind of awesome, though I think the person Paulson needs to ass-kiss is John Boehner, whose name is technically pronounced BAY-ner but after fucking up the bailout at John McCain's request yesterday, I think we can just pronounce it how it looks.

SPENCER: You know what's perfect about Boehner? He has an aide named Kevin Smith. As in the Kevin Smith who fucks up everything he touches and cheapens our love for such beautiful things as comic books and the New Jersey Turnpike. And I'm unconvinced Boehner/McCain's gambit will work.

MEGAN: Dude, I think it makes John McCain look like his whole purpose in coming back here was to fuck this up. Other people agree.

SPENCER: No no no I totally get that. The scenario would be like Obama starts to hold his non-debate town hall in Mississippi, it gets five minutes in and then all the networks cut away to a McCain presser in Washington where he announces that his tireless work has yielded a deal. Right? But it's only actually a deal if the Democrats go along with it, and after yesterday's acrimony, they're not going to assist McCain in torpedoing their candidate. Well, maybe Hillary.

MEGAN: Well, Hillary's totally not involved in it. And, yeah, I mean, McCain's backing the Boehner plan which is to provide tax breaks to companies that buy up bad debt and provide government insurance for it all because, as WaMu and IndyMac proved, insuring bad debt doesn't cost taxpayers any money whatsoever!

SPENCER: So the Democrats get to be on the right side substantively and politically, and McCain reinforces the narrative of his unforced error. How is this bad for Obama? I remember how yesterday's liberal conventional wisdom was how McCain was setting himself up to vote against the bailout!

MEGAN: Only if Chuck Todd is right and no one televises the Obama debate.

SPENCER: That's where I have no insight. What else are the networks going to broadcast?

MEGAN: Let's hope not reruns, because I don't have cable up here.

SPENCER: It costs money for them to have to upend their scheduling for a re-done presidential debate, I imagine that they're going to just give Obama the time since at least some fraction of the audience will tune in anyway. JUST LIKE THE LIBERAL SHILLS THEY ARE. Clearly McCain has his cock in the pooch's ass here.

MEGAN: Yeah, I also love how he's all like well, if Obama had just agreed to my town hall meetings then the debates wouldn't be necessary or important. He's never going to fucking let that go, and no one gives a shit. That was a blatant political move as much as coming back to DC to "save" the bailout plan.

SPENCER: The people I feel bad for are, like, Tucker Bounds. He needed McCain to win, just really really needed it, because no one else is going to hire a flack who ruined his own credibility. I was in the Austin gymnasium where Ari Fleischer told a goggle-eyed press corps that "Palm Beach County is a Pat Buchanan stronghold" and if Bush hadn't pulled that shit out, Ari would never have been able to get another job here at all. Well, maybe that's wrong, because there's the whole spirit of "he had to lie for his boss" in DC, but still, you see what I'm getting at.

MEGAN: The problem is that Tucker Bounds is bad at it, not that he's a liar. But, yes, if McCain loses, he'll be in trouble job-wise because of his basic incompetence.

SPENCER: And Tucker Bounds' people. Basically the whole McCain communications shop. The Weekly Standard can't hire all of them. Some will have to get jobs doing things like sucking GOP staffers off in the Union Station men's room. This economy, it's tough.

MEGAN: As though GOP staffers have to pay other staffers to suck them off in the men's rooms of Union Station. Only Lindsay Graham has to do that.

SPENCER: Hey, that's never been proven.

MEGAN: That's the kind of discretion that Lindsay Graham is paying for!

SPENCER: You know what sucks about DC? If there's no debate tonight, I don't know what my plans are. I'm supposed to have people over to watch the fucking thing.

MEGAN: I'm supposed to be live-blogging the stupid thing after my sister's rehearsal dinner, so tell me about it.

SPENCER: You, you're going to a wedding, with your family, you're set, there's nothing excruciating about that. I'm at the mercy of twitter-whims.

MEGAN: You and your sarcasm.

SPENCER: Jesus FUCK there's a bunch of construction workers in my office knocking out a wall. I wish someone would have told me not to come in today.

MEGAN: Oh, if you didn't know, we do know how Treasury arrived at the $700 billion figure.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

And that's not even why John McCain wants to scuttle the motherfucking thing.

SPENCER: Now that's how the professionals do it! I read that and just think, what these people need is $700 billion without strings attached.

MEGAN: Hey, what Republican doesn't want that?

SPENCER: So there was this event last night where my friends Ezra and Yglz held forth on where progressivism is at these days, and Ezra said something that's haunted me all night. It's probably totally obvious to anyone who isn't an economic illiterate: Liberals are about to (PROBABLY HOPEHOPEHOPEAUDACITYHOPE) take power, on the headwinds of promises to restore a sensible balance between government and the market. There will be expectations, naturally, of doing... stuff. You know, delivering on promises about health care and education and the sort of robust safety net that distinguishes liberalism from its alternatives. But there's no money for that stuff anymore — the crisis has wiped it out. So now liberalism is in an awful dilemma: power, but without the means to use it; a consensus around nationalizing huge swaths of the market, but without the ability to get it to deliver on the purchase. Later he and his fellow panelists qualified the idea to death or dismissed it, but shit, you know?

MEGAN: I think Boehner proves there isn't necessarily a consensus around nationalizing vast swaths of the market, but I think it's hilarious that it's not because of the idea of nationalizing anything but because of taxes. And, yes, this financial crisis fucks up pretty much every major expenditure program the Obama camp had on its agenda — Pelosi's already talking a wealth surtax to pay for the bailout, which then screws Obama's tax plans, which screws health care, etc. The only thing it might prompt would be a major tax system overhaul, which we need anyway. But Charlie Rangel's too deep in the shit right now to be able to put that together.

SPENCER: I can't tell if what you're saying is reassuring! Dumb it down.

MEGAN: Um, no, it wasn't reassuring. I don't have The Hope.

SPENCER: Speaking of hopelessness, have a good wedding

MEGAN: We toasted the End of Fun last night. And then annoyed a gay bar by singing "Going to the Chapel."

SPENCER: I see from your Twitter feed that your gay karaoke friends inserted SUCK MY COCK into the "Sweet Caroline" refrain. How to get Fenway Park to do that? Come on Boston fans, out of the closet with ALL of you.

MEGAN: It was way better than shouting "BUH BUH BUM" but I'm betting they just did it because they were Yankees fans.

• Good news first: Obama is up in the polls in Pennsylvania and Iowa and tied in Minnesota and Nevada. Also, most people blame Republicans for the current economy crisis. Unfortunately, he's pulling staff from North Dakota, Georgia, Idaho and Alaska. That can't be good. [CNN, CNN, CNN]
• A new poll shows that, since putting Palin on the ticket, McCain now polls evenly with Obama on the question of who understands women and what's important to us. Obama used to have a 34 point lead. [Politico]
• Obama's got a new ad in which he (rightly) accused McCain's health care plan of being a massive program of deregulation, sort of like how McCain used to love the deregulation of financial markets, too. That the kind of change even an NRA member might fear more than an ammo tax these days. [Huffington Post]

• Speaking of, the NRA has started running ads against Obama saying that he wants to tax guns and ammo. That's all they got? Taxes? No more "cold dead hands" now that Charlton Heston's hands are cold and dead? [Marc Ambinder]
• John McCain's Brazilian mistress is out there talking about him. She thinks he's still cute. We think visualizing John McCain boning is our new weight-loss plan. [Daily Mail]
• Biden's having trouble prepping for her debates because —as we've pointed out — Palin's record is so fucking thin he's basically just prepping to debate McCain. Aw, Joe, it's ok, she doesn't much know what she thinks on a lot of issues either. [Politico]
• In a completely undeserved casualty of the liberal hatred of Sarah Palin, sales of the Chilean winery Palin's Syrahs have bottomed out in San Francisco. Good wineries should not be made to suffer! [Politico]
• Unsurprisingly, George Bush doesn't think CEOs should be financially penalized for running our country's financial system into the ground. But this was the same guy who thought giving the Secretary of the Treasury unlimited powers without judicial oversight was a good idea, so what the fuck does he know? [Think Progress, Huffington Post]

But, in that absence of a record — and as the Vice President on a ticket headed by John McCain — his stances are now basically her stances, or at least the policies she'll be called upon to defend. And, like her position on abortion, his stances on a range of issues important to women are not exactly progressive.

Abortion Rights: On abortion, they're clearly alike (now). McCain used to support an exception in cases of rape, incest or risk to the life of the mother but reversed himself this year. Glamour reports that he didn't support overturning Roe V. Wade in 1999, then he did and that he was kind of a dick when the magazine's editors asked for further clarification. He's definitely all excited about the 2-3 Supreme Court vacancies expected "by the people who decide these things," since that'll give him a chance to appoint justices that will see Roe v. Wade as a "bad decision" the way that he does.

Equal Pay For Equal Work: Moving onto pay equity, something else that Sarah Palin's said nary a word on. McCain's said plenty, including that he's "all for pay equity" but not for the Ledbetter bill because it would lead to, you know, women using the courts to enforce said equity. Of course, he's also said that we could solve pay equity by giving women better job training, which sort of pisses Lilly Ledbetter off. Nonetheless, the official position of a McCain-Palin administration would be "no" to any bill that attempted to resolve the issues in the law that allowed the Supreme Court to fuck over Lilly Ledbetter.

Women At War: McCain's somewhat more progressive on women in combat, telling Glamour:

I think this policy needs to be reevaluated constantly.... We have more and more evidence of greater abilities of women in combat. Also...this conflict is everywhere; we have had a large number of women wounded and killed in Iraq and in Afghanistan. I'm for integrating women as much as possible—with one exception: For example, in Baghdad today, a male combat infantryman puts on 50 pounds of body armor, then another 40 or 50 pounds of military equipment. I want to make sure that women are able to also do that. Now, I'm not saying women are physically weak. Some of the strongest [people] I have ever known in my life are women.... I just want to make sure that they're able to carry out these missions in the most effective fashion.... Women have proven to [everyone's] satisfaction as pilots, as combat medics, in any other role they've been in, that they're perfectly capable, and in some ways not only capable but superior.

Of course, that's a little bit different than what he said back in 1991, but even old dogs can learn new tricks. Is flip-flopping a doggie trick? Anyway, he'd "reevaluate" constantly, sort of like he already has, but I would say it's iffy whether he and Palin would reverse the women in combat decision; I doubt they'd be spearheading any women-in-combat initiatives — let alone any reversal of don't ask, don't tell, despite its disproportionate effects on feamles.

Sex Education: While, as I've previously mentioned, Sarah Palin's record on abstinence-only education is sketchy at best, McCain's positions are more robust. He supports teaching abstinence in schools and is less supportive of birth control education. In fact, he's said that he opposes eliminating the proved-ineffective abstinence-only education programs currently on the books, while leaving wiggle room on giving teenagers some information that there are ways to avoid pregnancy if you ignore the abstinence thing. He did vote against an 2005 family planning bill and, when asked to explain by Glamour first said it was because it have provisions on funding abortion (it didn't) and then clarified that it was because it had provisions relating to Plan B, which doesn't exactly make it better.

In the end, when it comes to women's issues, there may not be a ton of information out there on where Sarah Palin stands, but — like every Vice President before her — she's not going to have any choice but to stand by her man... who hardly stands by many of the women in this country on the issues outlined above. McCain thinks women should nonetheless vote for him because he wants to keep taxes low (not that he's actually correct about that) and make sure that when his plan goes through Congress, the (magical) markets will keep prices low.

Interestingly, McCain's economic adviser, Carly Fiorina thinks women shouldn't be voting just based on abortion, and that issues likes taxes and health insurance are important to women too — issues on which, as I've just noted, McCain is actually worse on. So tell me again how is McCain's candidacy is supposed to be about the issues?

For these reasons and undoubtedly many others, the National Organization for Women Political Action Committee today endorsed Barack Obama and Joe Biden for the Presidency and Vice Presidency — one of the very few times the organization has ever made a general election endorsement. But even NOW's President, Kim Gandy, admitted on NPR that this would be controversial among some of their members despite the significant differences between Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin on the issues supposedly of importance to women. Bethesda, MD psychologist Lynette Long, a lifetime Democrat, probably knows a little about why — she's not voting on the issues, just on the gender that she shares with Sarah Palin. For all Fiorina's (and McCain's, and Palin's) posturing about the elections being about the issues (and about issues other than abortion), the McCain camp wants a lot of women like Long to completely ignore the issues, not choose between them.

Palin's Record on Women's Issues Questions [UPI]
Palin: Unserious About Sex Crimes and Domestic Violence [Shakesville]
Palin On Abortion: I'd Oppose Even If My Own Daughter Was Raped [Huffington Post]
McCain Poised to Flip on GOP Abortion Platform [ABC News]
Is McCain the Nostradamus of the Supreme Court? [CBS News]
McCain Opposes Equal Pay Bill In The Senate [Huffington Post]
John McCain [Glamour]
Women's Combat Roles Likely To Be On Next President's Agenda [LA Times]
McCain: Gay Troops "Intolerable Risk" [Gay.com]
John McCain Campaign to Brody File: Eliminating "Abstinence Only" Programs is Wrong [CBN News]
Health Insurance And the Single Girl [Glamocracy]
Tax Plans And the Single Girl [Glamocracy]
National Organization for Women PAC Endorses Obama-Biden [NOW]
National Organization For Women Endorses Obama [NPR]
In This Election, Putting Gender First [Baltimore Sun]

• Despite a little wave in the direction of potential independent women voters earlier this year, anti-abortion Republicans feel much better today that McCain is fooling independents and not them about his position on abortion. Of course, he also talked about how he wouldn't have nominated the 4 liberal justices on the Supreme Court despite having voted to confirm all of them but Stephens (nominated before McCain took office), but, details, people.[Time]
• Another juicy tidbit: McCain thinks the dividing line between the middle and the "upper" class is $5 million in yearly income. But it doesn't matter because he's not going to raise anyone's taxes, and especially not yours! [Politico]
• In other laughable news, the Republican National Convention is "going green" by putting out a whole 300 recycling bins and loaning out 1,000 bicycles to convention goers. That should be quite a sight to see. [Politico]

• Bob Remer, a Clinton delegate from Illinois, is trying to kill the caucus systems in the states that have them, but it totally has nothing to do with Clinton failing to get the nomination. He's really concerned about those people in Nevada, damn it! Even if they, you know, like their system fine the way it is. [HuffPo]
• The Amethyst Initiative is recruiting college presidents and calling on lawmakers to reduce the drinking age to 18 from 21. They rightly note that college kids all drink anyway, but MADD and their supporters say that colleges could totes eliminate underage drinking if they really tried. It's worked so well all these years, after all [Boston Globe]
• People in Pakistan are celebrating the resignation of President Pervez "Uncle Pervy" Musharraf today. Instead of two peace signs, he raised his fists. That seems about right for him. [LA Times]

• When John McCain was asked to comment on Jerome Corsi's work of Obama-hating fiction, McCain told the reporter, "gotta keep your sense of humor." This caused an uproar, so McCain's spokeswoman said he never heard the question. So he's either politically tone deaf or going deaf? Good save. [CNN]
• It's probably because the campaign has more important things to deal with, like convincing right-to-lifers that McCain would, like, totally not pick a pro-choice VP even though he said he would. Pick one! Maybe then they really will stay home. [Politico]
• McCain defended his love of ABBA today by saying his taste in music was stuck back in the sixties when he got shot down. Unfortunately, it turns out ABBA started recording in the seventies. Was this part of the torture technique of the North Vietnamese? [CNN, Attackerman]

• Condi Rice is in the other Georgia, getting them to sign a cease-fire as the Russians continue running around shooting at stuff. [NY Times]
• The Pentagon is making sure troops overseas get absentee ballots for this election. They're doing their part — even though way more deployed troops are donating to Obama than McCain. Are you doing yours to make sure you can vote in November? [CNN, Attackerman]
• And in what might be the strangest news of the day, the conservative Heritage Foundation has admitted that Obama's tax plan will save middle class voters more money than McCain's. They tied themselves up in knots trying to make that sound like a bad thing, but they couldn't quite manage. Watch out for the Four Horsemen this weekend — this is definitely a sign of something. [NY Sun]

A new website called "How I Spent My Stimulus" is devoted to people posting pictures and stories about how they spent the free government dough. A book, based on the entries received, is to come, naturally.

Michael, from Los Angeles, spent his check on a nice little vacation to a communist country (Vietnam). Apparently the spending of American dollars in communist countries was pretty popular this year.

There were also a lot of people who wisely spent their checks on bills, school tuition, tire alignment, and other things they were in need of. One woman gave her stimulus check to her granddaughter to help the poor kid start paying back all the debt the government has acquired by borrowing money from China (and using it for stimulus checks). Fun!

Of course, there were also plenty of dumb people who spent their stimulus checks on frivolous things like luxury goods and clothes (including me, sorry mom!). One guy bought a fucking sailboat. Another guy spent his check on a pair of $330 Prada sunglasses (from the Sunglass Hut, no less). Money well spent?

You decide.

Eric, an earnest guy in Seattle, decided to spend his check on "services" because he heard they would stimulate the economy better than just buying things. He went to go see Cirque de Soleil: Corteo with his family. Do you think he enjoyed it?

Hm.

What did you all spend your stimulus check on? Did you even get it? (Many on the Jezebel staff have not! Give these women their checks, government, there is wine to be bought!) Sadie spent hers on getting someone to clean her kitchen "really, really well." I was planning on saving mine but decided to "invest" (haha) it in some adult clothes (a Helmut Lang blazer on sale and some black pumps by Marc Jacobs). Now all I need an adult situation to wear them in!

[How I Spent My Stimulus]

• Hey, remember how we were going to, like, tax oil companies more and stuff? Yeah, not gonna happen anytime soon. [Washington Post]
• But, hey, monkeys can fish! So, as long as we don't eat all the fish or kill all the monkeys before we drive ourselves into extinction, they can totes rule the world later. [AP]
• Yes, that was a cheap distraction before I told you that we're totally fucked in Afghanistan and no one has any idea what to do about it. [Washington Independent]
• But that's ok, because Obama might pick Ret. Gen. James Jones, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, as VP, because now the Democratic party is all about getting the military dudes on the take so they can look "strong" and shit. Only, the story is actually complete bullshit because he's already a McCain adviser and someone is laughing at MSNBC besides me. [MSNBC, Politico]

• In other news of the stupid, Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma has crowned himself the new Miss South Carolina by releasing a commercial trumpeting his foreign policy credential: "Ethiopia. Zambia. Iraq. Twenty-nine intense trips in 12 years to the front — to the saddest parts of Africa." Oh, wait, where's Iraq again? [Washington Independent]
• And, apparently we're going to try to make all the lefty protesters crap their pants at once at the conventions this summer. Oh, that's a brilliant idea. Better shitting than shouting? [Fox News]
• But in good news, Republicans in the Senate have now defined electoral success in November as only losing eight seats to the Democrats. If they lose 9, they can't even filibuster, which is the only thing they give a shit about doing anyway. [HuffPo]
• And, just to mess with you, McCain said today, "I will veto every single beer." Damn that man, even if he is willing to call his home turf a swing state. [CNN, Washington Independent]

MEGAN: I have decided that CNN's morning show has become The Today Show and can't watch it anymore despite the hotness of Sanjay Gupta. MSNBC is my only alternative despite Joe Scarborough's dickishness (today: he's going to buy a Tahoe hybrid, which gets shittier gas mileage than my 8 year old Corolla but the Tahoe is biiiiiig unlike his dick) but since I'm apparently being a dick today it's working for me. Sort of. I wish I hadn't given my collection of stress balls to that guy I was dating last year when he was quitting smoking because I could now be throwing them at the TV.
MOE: I haven't watched TV or really slept very much in a very, very long time. I'm a total shutin, trying to write prettily the tale of antibiotic resistant bacteria for this epic piece I can't seem to finish even as I'm sort of fascinated by microbiology.

MEGAN: You know what's fucked? My parents' neighbor's daughter, who is 3 or 4 years younger than me, has had a drug resistant flesh-eating staph infection for the last 6 months.
MOE: I guess I should at the very least read Drudge, or this is going to be one of those things where it's like "oh, Moe's gotten REALLLY stupid hasn't she."
MEGAN: She's been in and out of the hospital and they're only now maybe kind of sure she won't lose her arm and she's like 25.
MEGAN: Nah, actually, reading Drudge will make you stupid, I think. The Pope is here! Obama's not hope-y! Clinton's on the attack! And McCain isn't that bad!
MOE: It's the affliction of our thoughtless Cold War antibiotics policies. We've given the bacteria all these opportunities to create these radicalized master races with our indiscriminate use of antibiotics.
MEGAN: Got a cold? Have some antibiotics! Got an ear infection perhaps? Enjoy! Yummy amoxicilin!
MOE: Whenever you take 3 days worth of amoxicillin to kill a cold that you thought was maybe a sinus infection, you're funding terrorism.
MOE: Or like, eating meat.
MEGAN: Yeah, beef. Damn beef.

MEGAN: Corn fed beef that's spent its life as a cow crapping all over and being crapped on by other cows necessitating a constant stream of antibiotics to keep them from getting sick before slaughter because, really, it takes a really special slaughterhouse to still slaughter a downer cow and feed it to the populace and the USDA is getting so mean about that these days. What? It's not like we've got BSE in this country. Or, um, but we totally got it from Canada! Only when we didn't! Whatever, everyone should take our meat anyway.
MOE: OMG Cindy McCain is totally the next coming of Jessica Seinfeld. And they use them in pork and chickens too. It's not so much to resist infection (because um, duh, when you feed cows a constant supply of antibiotics it's not going to really do anything about the infections after awhile) but to fatten them up faster. They grow like 12% faster for some reason. I think it has to do with the gut flora but I don't really know.
MOE: I love this:

This past Sunday, Lauren Handel, an eagle-eyed attorney from New York, was searching for a specific recipe from Giada DeLaurentis, a chef on the Food Network. Yet whenever she Googled the different ingredients in the recipe, the oddest thing happened: not only did the Food Network's site come up, as expected, but so did John McCain's campaign site.

MEGAN: Yeah, I saw that yesterday. Old men fucking their 12-year-old daughters? Totes fine. Cops talking to them about it? Baaaad.

MEGAN: But MSNBC yesterday had an interview with a former sect member who was all, hey, that bitch you're showing crying about her kids? Yeah, she used to beat mine.
MOE: Bob Herbert re bittergate:

But there is something perverse in the effort to portray Senator Obama — who has tried hard to promote a message of unity and healing — as some kind of divisive figure.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxit professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.

"The rest of Europe will just roll its eyes, sigh and say, 'Here we go again,' but there's nothing they can do about it," said John Harper, a professor of political science at the Bologna branch of Johns Hopkins University.

MEGAN: But, apparently, in Italy that's sort of okay which is why he got re-elected.
MOE: Ohkay, Geoff Davis. Nasty racist congressman refers to Obama as snake oil salesman, was less impressed with this World of Warcraft game than he was with his bowling score!

He said in his remarks at the GOP dinner that he also recently participated in a "highly classified, national security simulation" with Obama.
"I'm going to tell you something: That boy's finger does not need to be on the button," Davis said. "He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country."

MEGAN: Also, I love that this is the overarching analysis of the paper's prescience:

We had high economic growth for years, but never solved the problems of poverty, unemployment and unequal income distribution. And those problems are still there

Behind the scenes, Cosby hired the Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint to make sure that the show never trafficked in stereotypes and that it depicted blacks in a dignified light. Picking up Cosby's fixation on education, Poussaint had writers insert references to black schools. "If the script mentioned Oberlin, Texas Tech, or Yale, we'd circle it and tell them to mention a black college," Poussaint told me in a phone interview last year. "I remember going to work the next day and white people saying, 'What's the school called Morehouse?'" In 1985, Cosby riled NBC by placing an anti-apartheid sign in his Huxtable son's bedroom. The network wanted no part of the debate. "There may be two sides to apartheid in Archie Bunker's house," the Toronto Star quoted Cosby as saying. "But it's impossible that the Huxtables would be on any side but one. That sign will stay on that door. And I've told NBC that if they still want it down, or if they try to edit it out, there will be no show." The sign stayed.

MOE: Well, since then, you know, he's become kind of the Cedric character in Barbershop. In Philadelphia we did a lot of stories about all the charges that he'd had a big problem groping and dateraping women or something. There do not seem to be mentions of those in this story, which depicts him as a well-intentioned hater.

MEGAN: Yeah, whatever happened with that? Those were some vicious stories.
MEGAN: Also, I love how the death of his son isn't presented at all as a potential reason for the change in his public demeanor.
MOE: 13 women is a lot to ignore.
MEGAN: And, yet, somehow The Atlantic Ta-Nehisi Coates manage to do so. Strange that.
MEGAN: Oh, um, maybe not that strange. Ta-Nehisis is a dude. Married to a woman named Kenyatta, to bring it back to Obama's father's critique.
MOE: And yes, I think that would make you a candidate for the "bitter" category. To be honest, everyone in this damn country needs to grow the fuck up, stop spending so much money, stop watching reality TV, invest in an Economist subscription, learn a foreign language, and help others now and again.
MEGAN: But The Deadliest Catch's new season premieres tonight on the Discovery Channel! That doesn't count as "reality" TV right?

MOE: So you feel guilty cheating on me? I gotta confess, I didn't read Crappy Hour. Well, I didn't read the site actually. But I avoided Crappy Hour in particular because the last time I brought Spencer into it, it ended up being 337 lines long or something. That's why I had to bait everyone with the "date" thing, because I figured that even the die-hard CH readers would give up around line 54.

MEGAN: I think we successfully kept it short, though we got kind of tanget-y, which you and I naturally know nothing about,

MEGAN: But can we maybe have a moment of silence for Mark Penn, who jeopardized the $10 million he took off of Hillary's campaign for a $300,000 1 year contract to push for the Colombian FTA? F'idiot.

MOE: Okay yeah I just want to lay it all out there. Mark Penn has extraordinarily bad hair. Then there is the exciting news that Condi Rice has been actively pursuing Dick Cheney's job, which is wonderful news for all Americans. And then there is that crazy polygamist shit and a think piece in the NYT Mag about Levittown, Pennsylvania that I sorta read and a think piece on Guantanamo Bay in the New Yorker that I sort of didn't read, but you brought up the $10 million dollar thing which is I think a good segue into the Clintons' centimillion dollar tax returns and the inspiring news that being a CEO is as ludicrously lucrative as it has ever been despite the credit crisis, wait, no, scratch that, it is more lucrative than it has ever been.
MEGAN: Well, naturally, it's more lucrative than it's ever been! We obviously need to pay the best and the brightest as much as we can afford to keep it from happening again!

MOE: OH fuck, but you know what my favorite part of the fucking
weekend was? Reading the Wall Street Journal edit page slam Obama for not being sufficiently invested our ponzi scheme of a stock market.
MEGAN: Capital gains is also what you pay if you sell your house and don't reinvest all the proceeds in your next house, but trust the rent-babies at the WSJ to ignore that detail.
MEGAN: Also, you don't pay cap gains on your 401K or IRA if you don't withdraw early, which you might need to do if you make less than $50,000 a year and that's in effect your entire savings.

MOE: I love this slight:

With apologies to economists Buffett and Obama, the history of this tax isn't on their side. The capital gains rate is crucial to investment decisions; higher rates make capital more expensive, dampening incentives to invest and reducing economic growth.

MEGAN: Gah, everything in there pisses me off. Not that I want the cap gains rate to go up, but, still, it's like citing statistics without really explaining it.
MEGAN: I'm guessing like, Poland or something. Not the Czech Republic, but maybe the Slovak?

MOE: I think the cap gains rate should go up, not just because I have no stock market holdings, except this 401K from my last job I don't know what happened to. It just sort of disappeared. Maybe it's there for me somewhere. Hm. Whatever. I bought a Swiss army knife over the weekend and read books. I've decided to join this new survivalist movement I've been hearing so much about. Also, commenters who would like to recommend aggressive accountants: moe@jezebel.com.
MOE: Yeah, the Slovaks, we're the slackers. The slacker-ovaks.
MOE: My people know the farce that is this myopic focus on incremental economic growth.
MEGAN: Well, your 401K isn't subject to cap gains, but if it's lost track of you they have to hold onto it forever, it's awesome like that.
MEGAN: Figure out where it was and call and make them track it down.
MOE: Okay but seriously we should probably discuss Mark Penn right?
MEGAN: Oh, hells yeah.
MOE: If you'd taken SinsisterRouge's advice six months ago, Hills, we might not be in this spot.

MEGAN: Except that Hunter Walker just sent me this link in which Hillary asks for credit because it takes her longer to do her hair and make-up. If this is what Maggie Williams hath wrought, I sorta want Mark Penn back.
MOE: Oh Jesus, HILLARY. You know what is so annoying about that? Michael Kinsley wrote that first. And like, it was cool of Kinsley to point that out; hey, give the lady some credit, being a woman is tough because you need to apply all sorts of consumer products to your face and hair and match your clothes to your eyeshadow and stuff and as a result, get less sleep than men. Right. So it's stating an obvious feminine truth, which is cool if you're Michael Kinsley, but you're Hillary Clinton and your campaign is — let's face it guys — really in its final hours, being read its last rites...is that what you want your last words to be? Actually never mind, I take that all back.

MOE: "You gotta give me credit, I applied some really pretty looking eye-shadow, and that shit ain't easy."
MOE: "They construct entire reality shows around MUCH LESS."
MEGAN: Way to strike a blow for feminism, Maggie.
MOE: "Now, onto my second career as the celebrity judge of Make Me A Superdelegate!"
MEGAN: Like, really? I mean, I know you and I have similar beauty regimens: sit around in our own filth until we have to leave the house, wash, put on clean clothes and minor make up and then leave.
MOE: Okay, so seriously, also, back to Mark Penn. You know, when all this was starting, the Clintons did not need to remind America how creepy Clinton pollsters tended to be
MEGAN: Yeah, what is up with that? And how hilare is it when Penn is the less creepy one?
MOE: I actually showered this morning but applied no makeup. Oh, here's some sad news: the guy who makes my egg sandwiches at the deli? Not the guy that owns the deli — that would be aiming too high but the guy who makes the sandwiches —- well I apply lipstick for that guy. Anyhow, so, Mark Penn. Why so long, and at such a tremendous cost? What sort of deal did they have? Is he friends with Ron Burkle and Anne Hathaway's boyfriend? What is the deal there?

MEGAN: I mean, if you're politically and personally committed to someone, do you need $10+ million? He was shilling for the Colombians for $300K. Campaign staffers and Hill staffers work for peanuts. Hell, White House phone answerers work for practically minimum wage. What the hell did he need $10 million for?
MEGAN: I'm guessing she just felt sort of dependent on him and a little lost without him and he took advantage, plus Obama already had Axelrod.
MEGAN: Who, by the way, totally cracked a "the pen is not mightier than the 'rod" joke on MSNBC this morning and I switched channels.
MOE: Well that's just the thing. What if he had some top secret classified GPS-enabled brainwave-reading software hacked straight from Karl Rove himself that promised to deliver the coronation swiftly and bloodlessly? It like, didn't work, guys. And wait a second, AXELROD made that joke?
MOE: Hahahahahahahahahahaha that's aweosme.
MOE: I keep meaning to turn on the TV but it hasn't happened and as you may recall my MSNBC is still muted.
MEGAN: Axelrod totally did. Even Scarborough groaned. Axelrod claimed he'd made it up while on hold but Joe was all, dude, we all know you've been waiting to say that for months and it was the first time I wholeheartedly agreed with Joe Scarborough.

MOE: Hahahahahahaha
MEGAN: By the way, CNN is picking up the "blogging ourselves to death" story. I've got a cold. I've decided these things are related.

MOE: Of course he'd been saving that for months. How could you not? I'm sorry, it's so stupid, but so awesome. Okay, so, um...Pennsylvania! I keep reading conflicting things. Did you get through that Levittown piece? I got halfway through and will summarize: Levittown is a little blue-collar racist town in Pennsylvania in which the author was raised. It seemed aggressively "normal" and "solidly middle-class" then but it is all beer guts and broken dreams now. The Obama campaign headquarters is dominated by an old guy who was a Republican until he read the two Obama books. Black people don't live there.
MEGAN: Yeah, that sounds like where I grew up.
MEGAN: Also, I've been to one of those Obama roundtable meetings where you're, like, invited to testify like it's a religious meeting. A guy brought me there on a date. It's in the top 10 strangest dates ever. Neither of us called the other back. I didn't testify.

MOE: You missed a large inter-Gawker Inc. email-versation about that. I felt inadequate, as I have only one laptop and I sit on my couch all day and really haven't felt that 'adrenaline' feeling since the first week we launched. I certainly feel like I have blogged myself out of a life, but to death? Hmmmm.
MEGAN: I can only imagine the email thread.
MOE: This Condi pursuing the veepship — is that just crazy talk? Also, did McCain do anything else stupid lately?
MOE: I haven't been paying as much attention as I should have maybe.

MEGAN: Well, if he did it's totally been overshadowed by all the bowling and pandering going on in Pennsylvania.
MEGAN: Also, I can't see Condi pursuing it? I think people just mostly want her to and thus it's spawning the stories.
MEGAN: Whoa, CNN has been banned from reporting from Zimbabwe.
MOE: Oh, yeah, Zimbabwe! What's happening with that?
MEGAN: They're pretty screwed. They're going to have a runoff despite the fact that the President definitely lost. They're arresting some reporters and expelling others, bandits are taking over what few white-owned farms remain and armed militias are patrolling the streets for the "safety" of the people.

MOE: Oh should we address Charlton Heston and/or the PA primary? Charlton Heston: Michael Moore didn't even look like an ass making you look like an ass.
MEGAN: Charlton Heston: We can have his guns now, kthnxbi

• The McCain strategist who thought it was a brilliant idea to have him give a speech at the Lorraine Motel on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination to apologize for having voted against MLK Day should probably not keep his job. [CBS News]
  
• The advance staffer who gave the world the image of an African-American man holding an umbrella over McCain during the speech needs to go, too. [HuffPo]
  
• Hillary Clinton's speechwriters, who wrote a speech that, for once, actually played to her oratorical skills, should stay. The guy who decided to coin the phrase "Poverty Czar"? Probably not. [NY Times]
  
• Oooh, blind item: which one of you lesbian, bonerkilling commentwhores was dragged out of a Hillary event in Los Angeles? Fess up! [Breitbart]

• Hillary's tax returns are out, and yeah, the Clintons are ridiculously rich. [Yahoo]
• One would think that there'd be no way to make a story about Clinton and Madonna boring. One would think wrong. [HuffPo]
• Even though he took $10 million from Hillary's campaign and then used his position of prominence as a lobbyist to undercut her stance against the Colombian Free Trade Agreement, Mark Penn gets to just apologize and continue raking in that cash. [Politico]
• Speaking of unemployment, it's up, of course. [LA Times]
• But the Michigan do-over is down for the count. [WaPo]
• Not that there aren't bigger election problems other places, like ZImbabwe. [WaPo]
• In case you want a little quiet reflection on events past but always remembered, you can read RFK's words about MLK's assassination, the words of the witnesses to the assassination (who still haven't been questioned by police?) and then a somber piece about why so many people fear for Obama's safety, even today.

The feminist blogosphere is up in arms because Mike Huckabee pardoned a rapist and signed a petition that asks women to "submit graciously" to their husbands, but these same bloggers give him a free pass on taxes. This make me think of that terribly stereotypical Teen Talk Barbie from a few Christmases back. "Math class is tough!" she said. I'd hate to think that taxes are too "tough" for the Barbie blogs to address today.

Put simply, the people with the best accountants in the country send the lowest percentage of their income to the IRS. Just ask Warren Buffett:

Warren E. Buffett was his usual folksy self Tuesday night at a fundraiser for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as he slammed a system that allows the very rich to pay taxes at a lower rate than the middle class.
Buffett cited himself, the third-richest person in the world, as an example. Last year, Buffett said, he was taxed at 17.7 percent on his taxable income of more than $46 million. His receptionist was taxed at about 30 percent.