• Obama responds to McCain's Britney-and-Paris ad: "is that the best you can come up with?" We're all kind of hoping so, actually. [ABC News]
• Meanwhile, McCain's camp is accusing Obama of playing the race card. I guess they really weren't paying attention during the primary season when Hillary tried that. [NY Times]
• He'd probably just rather you not know that Exxon Mobil's earnings last quarter were $11.68 billion, the largest quarterly earnings by a U.S. company ever — or that their share price fell upon that news because they were expected to be higher. Because if you knew, you might think that there was something hinky with his energy plan, or lack thereof. [HuffPo]
• Speaking of hinky, the House held hearings into the teeny-tiny sexual assault problem the military seems to have in Iraq, though they didn't touch specifically on LaVena Johnson. The link has a great video of a rant about how fucked that whole situation is; it totally gave me a ladyboner. [Crooks & Liars]

• Tim Russert's son is going to be doing convention coverage for NBC. I'm pretty sure that sounds kind of wrong to me. Oh, and why doesn't Rachel Maddow have a show yet? [AP]
• A California court has ruled that the evil early termination fees the cell phone companies are charging you aren't legal. Not that I have a contract, but I might get one now if it means I won't have to pay a fee the next time I'm feeling flighty. I mean, if I move to California, that is. [Yahoo News]
• A judge has ruled that the White House doesn't have the power to ignore subpoenas from Congress. Expect nothing else to happen for a while, wheels of justice moving slowly, etc. [NY Times]
• Cynthia McKinney says that if the Mainstream Media gave the Green Party more press they'd be the second-biggest party in the U.S.. I say: not with Cynthia's kind of anti-Semitic crazy at the helm, it wouldn't. [Washington Post]

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

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

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

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

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

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

MOE: All of which is just to say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Television News Anchor. Okay, so this is obvious, but topical, because surely you've found yourself in recent weeks thinking, "What would Tim Russert's female equivalent look like?" And is there a single woman of prominence who looks anything remotely like her? No.
2. Pharmaceutical sales representative. (Or really, most jobs ending in "representative" now that our call centers have all been relocated in India.) Commonly recruited from college cheerleading teams, the practice of hiring hot drug reps probably originated around the time Big Pharma realized it could sell a lot of mood-enhancing pills to people who didn't need them if they took doctors out to dinner here and there. There's been some cutbacks in this industry since the major pharmaceutical companies got so focused on building their sales forces they forgot to develop any new drugs, but I bet being a babe doesn't hurt.
3. Any kind of "Director" that is not "Managing" This is obviously a gross generalization but my sense is that, from publishing to fashion to design to advertising to basically any sector besides film or traffic, "directing" is one of those things that can be done by people with minimal actual skill and therefore they probably got hired because their boss liked looking at them. I'm pretty sure "director" was a popular title at American Apparel, though in that case I might amend that last sentence to just finish reading "naked."
4. Intern When did all female magazine interns start looking like they'd been cast for a reality show? Seriously, when?
5. Italian cabinet member. In a scene in the latest British Esquire, Silvio Berlusconi is giving a town hall meeting and a woman rises from the audience to ask a question about the economy and her career prospects. "Don't worry," he tells her. "I'm sure a woman as beautiful as you can easily find a rich man to settle down with." But wait, it's not so bleak as all that! If she's really so insistent on working, I'm sure there's a spot for her in his cabinet.

Money Honeys [W Magazine]

MOE: I guess we have to talk about campaign finance today. But first I'd like to draw the readers' attention to this handy guide to why you can't really blame the war for the crap economy, despite what Stiglitz says, and even Stiglitz says the war has only added like $5 or $10 to the price of oil, but basically the point is that every globalization has its discontents and our objectivist malcontents didn't pay attention to that when they were setting policy so now we have more discontents over here while some folks in India and China are starting to enjoy better lives/deeper carbon footprints. ANYHOW
MEGAN: Prosperity brings global warming hooray! But only the rich can afford to reduce their carbon footprints. And I always find it difficult to believe that people really think that the war brings the bad economy when war generally makes the economy better. It was one of the reasons Hitler and WWII were initially so popular in Germany — taking shit over improved the economy almost immediately. War spending did its part for ending the Great Depression, etc.

MOE: Well yeah but as Stiglitz pointed out in 2003 Iraq was hardly "total war" and the economic benefits were thus hardly going to be evenly spread around. And as this report points out tax cuts, airline bailouts and No Child Left Behind played their early part in deficit spending. Oh man there are really cute dogs on my Fox News right now. Oh how sweet and all their owners have swaddled them in American flags and "freedom"-themed accessories!
MEGAN: Do they have freedom-themed leashes?

MEGAN: Yeah, I mean, while Bush was cutting taxes he was also presiding over the largest expansion in government history. I was at a speech by Andy Card in 2005, I think, and he went through all these verbal gymnastics to deny that the Administration had expanded the government which made the ambassador from an unnamed country next to whom I was seated marvel at his stones. It basically required that he exempt from consideration the Defense Department or DHS, which are (naturally) where all the increases have been, so it was absurdist in its brilliance. Sort of like if you don't want to be quoted, just curse every other word.
MOE: Hey, speaking of the defense budget is Israel trying to save us some money by just bombing Iran for us? Because that's awfully generous, considering all those fears we are about to elect that Muslim Marxist guy to lead the country and who knows what that means for the Jews…
MEGAN: Well, I mean, we are a leetle busy right now, I think we thought we'd be done enough in Iraq (the same way we're, like, totally Mission Accomplished in Afghanistan) that we could've started bombing Iran on our own.

MEGAN: Anyway, so, campaign finance?
MOE: Oh right, that's not my issue. And I must admit, I was occupied with this crazy Botox bandit story…and also vaguely transfixed by some story they're running on Fox now about some woman who lit up on an airplane, and in her mugshot she just looks kind of drunk or high so it kind of makes sense that she would do that, especially with fares so high these days you'd think you could do whatever you damn well please — ha! On my Virgin flight they wouldn't even let me use the blanket during takeoff, which was insane — and anyway, oh yes, Obama. We should talk about this. I guess it's disappointing but not surprising? I dunno

MEGAN: Well, but they all opted out of public financing for the primary and there were rumors McCain was going to for the general. Plus, I mean, it restricts him to $85 million which is maybe one of the reasons that, you know, Democrats don't go to states they "can't" win and ditto with Republicans and so everyone fights for Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida and concedes the others to one another.

MOE: I will say that even if it is blatantly hypocritical it also appeals to that side that worries about his ability to play dirty/be pragmatic/blahblah. Which seemed to be a big concern of Clintonites.
MEGAN: Oh, sure. I mean, I think the real issue is that 99% of Americans probably don't know anything about the public financing system so they whole OH MY GOD WHAT HAS HE DONE thing is probably right over their heads.
MEGAN: Which is why it's smart, release the video, let the talking heads pontificate for 24 hours just before the weekend, then release a new ad and start airing it in red states and let them think about that.

MEGAN: But, also, I think he makes an interesting point. Public financing comes from the $3 check-off on your tax return, so it's like small donations from small people funneled through the government. He's got 1.5 million donors, half of which are small-amount donors. He's practically creating his own public financing system, it's just one in which there are no limits on what he can spend after the convention.
MEGAN: Which is an interesting thing, actually. The party that has the Presidency gets the last convention, which means that the party without it gets a week or more where they are hamstrung by the public financing limits and hte incumbent party is not. In 2004, it was a full two weeks because the Dems went before the Olympics, then the Olympics and then the Republicans went and Bush became subject to the spending limits.
MOE: Hey check this out we're using one percent less gas than last year! And this is unrelated but here's a pleasant photo of a highway in Beijing, where starting July 20 they will also be using less gas, for obvious reasons. Okay, now I'm headed to Peggy and Brooks. Krauthammer and Krugman both wrote today about McCain's offshore drilling blah blah, one of them is for it and one of them is against it I'll let you guess who!

MEGAN: Gosh, so hard! Also, by the way, the DC metro system had 2 top-10 ridership days this week alone, and they're blaming it on gas prices.
MOE: David Brooks likens Obama to Mr. Rogers playing Ari on Entourage. (Would that be good for the Jews?) Anyway, he proceeds to do exactly the thing I was talking about where Obama actually gets praised for "selling out" in a move that should disappoint his starry-eyed media fans but actually makes them cream their pants because they are ashamed of their idealism and also, masochists:

MOE:

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

MEGAN: I think it's funny that Clinton supporters either think he's the worst of the Chicago political machine or a naive waif and never anything in between.
MOE: Although uh Noonan isn't feeling the sentimentality shame so much today:

In a way, the world is a great liar. It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn't. It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn't, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better.

MEGAN: Yeah, she was on Scarborough this morning and they all got maudlin about Tim Russert.
MOE:

That's what we talk about in eulogies, because that's what's important. We don't say, "The thing about Joe was he was rich."

MEGAN: Also, her site is down.

MEGAN: Off-topic, our friend Calderone has the story of the wacky Hardball ad about Michelle's supposed make over and an even funnier fake one for Cindy McCain.
MEGAN: I also think the whole thing is funny, like Michelle needs a fashion makeover? The figures aren't dancing ladies in the Obama ad as much as fake runway models
MOE: I hate sentences like that. How many eulogies have any sort of basis in the reality of someone's life? I went to a very rich guy's funeral once. All the eulogies were like "great guy worked hard loved the outdoors cared about his family" and meanwhile half the family is sitting there seething over what a cold unemotional terror he'd been. But yeah, I dunno. Anyway I failed to mention that the Bush Administration's spying on Americans thing may, like the shitty economy and the shady no-bid multibillion dollar overbudget defense contracts and chaos/anarchy/fear in Iraq, get to outlive the Administration.

MEGAN: I also love that the Dems rolled over on retroactive immunity for telecoms as part of it, giving just enough judicial oversight to make it look like there will be some if we aren't paying attention, but little enough that it will make any difference to the telecoms.

• Meet Bob Barr! He's running for President, wants John McCain's voters and is going to try really hard to get them in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana and West Virginia. Bob, can I also please recommend Ohio, Virginia, Georgia and Colorado? [Washington Post]
• Bush jumped on the "drill on our coastline to lower gas prices" bandwagon today now that his brother is no longer the Governor of Florida, despite the fact that there are hardly any ships to do it. I'll bet we could buy some from the Saudis or the Chinese or something. On credit. [Washington Post, NY Times]
• Mike Huckabee is trying to warn Republicans that demonizing Obama is gonna backfire. Luckily, they all stopped listening to him months ago, before they demonized Obama and lost those Congressional races. [Bloomberg]

• Three men were finally charged in the 2006 assassination of Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya. None of them will ever be tied to the people that ordered it, in all likelihood. [Washington Post]
• Tim Russert's funeral was today. It was sad. [NY Times]
• Torture apologist Doug Feith is a fraidy-cat, doesn't want to sit in a big room with people who might not like him, [ThinkProgress]
• That guy who swears that he blew Obama gave a press conference today, let out the crazy. His lawyer claims to need to wear skirts because of his enormous cock. [HuffPo]

• John Mayer and Jennifer Aniston spent the weekend in Mexico and you didn't. (PS: They stayed at Casa Aramara, the sprawling home owned by Girls Gone Wild dude Joe Francis.) [People]
• Jen and John are already back in L.A. [E!]
• Amy Winehouse fainted yesterday and was taken to the hospital "as a precaution." Her dad says "she's fine." [People]
• Um, E! is saying that Heidi Klum's new tattoo says "Seal." Can't see it. At all. [E!]
• Lindsay Lohan's been on the set of Labor Pains for a week and so far, so good.
  A producer says: "We were a little bit reluctant to work with her, but she's been amazing." The girl has gotten it together. [People]
• Oh, and LL did not submit herself for an Emmy — but Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus and Mary-Kate Olsen are in the race. [L.A. Times]

• Mary-Kate and Ashley spent their 22nd birthday in Manchester, Tennessee. They went to a honky tonk bar, hung out with Josh Groban and attended a My Morning Jacket concert. The next day, they went to the Bonnaroo Music Festival and danced while Pearl Jam played. [People]
• Denise Richards' reality show may not be based in reality, surprise, surprise. [Page Six]
• Gossip Girl star Chace Crawford says filming in the Hamptons means "beach scandal" and "OMG moments for sure." [People]
• Paris Hilton was on her way to a photo shoot over the weekend and stopped at a pet store because she "wanted a puppy in the picture with her so it would look cuter." Ugh. But! Employees blocked the heiress from purchasing a pup, stating that it was clearly an impulse buy. Hilton threw a fit. Peeps who work at that store, you are heroes. [Page Six]
• Mary J. Blige was at the Diane von Furstenberg store when she heard a girl having a problem at the register. The young woman had a dress on hold, but she thought it was $500, not $900. Mary paid for the balance on the dress, saying, "I know what it's like to want something and not be able to have it." Sigh. I love Mary. [Page Six]
• Jay-Z had dinner with New York's Governor, David Patterson. [Page Six]
• Arianna Huffington wasn't really a fan of Tim Russert. [Rush & Molloy]
• The wake for Tim Russert will be held today, MSNBC will broadcast a public memorial service on Wednesday. [ET]
• Brian Williams was supposed to host the Peabody awards but declined because he was grieving Tim Russert. [ET]
• Producers asked The Vatican if they could film the Da Vinci Code sequel there; The Vatican was like, hell no. [Best Week Ever]
• Liza Minnelli wants to be in the Arrested Development movie! [Rush & Molloy]
• Britney's dad has filed papers accounting for all the work he does: Running errands, buying groceries, paying her bills, managing her medical care and "cooking supper on a regular basis." He earns $2500 a week, but you can't put a price on the turn around that girl has made. [TMZ]
• The photog who claims Britney ran over his foot will have to live with the pain. [Reuters]
• Britney wants to move to the valley. [TMZ]
• Playboy Mansion denizens Kendra and Holly have been fighting. Hef! Break it up! [TMZ]
• David Duchovny is moving to the East Coast. First he has to sell his house, which, while not damaged by the Malibu fires, is in the evacuation zone. [L.A. Times]
• Javon Walker of the Oakland Raiders was found unconscious in Vegas with a busted eye socket. He's recovering in the hospital, but someone partied too hard, hmm? UPDATE: It appears to be the result of a robbery! [TMZ]
• Martha Stewart says Paul Newman looked a little thinner but was doing fine when she saw him recently. [ET]
• Are Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green no longer engaged? [Mirror]
• Naomi Campbell! Snogging a new dude! A Brazillian businessman! [The Sun]
• Scott Baio's baby had a health scare. [People]
• Taylor Dayne pleaded no contest to one count of reckless driving in connection with her DUI bust. She's sentenced to two years of probation and must complete a Mothers Against Drunk Driving program. [E!]
• "It's not for me to tell anybody or to pretend to have insights beyond what I absolutely know, but my instincts are that the idea Heath was disturbed by playing The Joker is ridiculous. Heath was somebody who, like myself, acted for that immersion in a character. It's not an unusual thing. And from working with him and knowing him, I don't think that was unusual for him at all." —Christian Bale, dismissing speculation that playing The Joker distressed Heath Ledger. [E!]
• Topless models abound in the new W magazine. [ONTD]
• Speaking of which, does Marissa Miller have implants? [Awful Plastic Surgery]
• "The other day, a girl on my plane was pulling my hair. She was like, 'I just want to check if ...' This is all my hair, by the way. I did not have extensions." — Gisele Bundchen. [Rush & Molloy]

MEGAN: Hey, there, how is London-Town.

MOE: Hey I just wrote something about being here. It is dumb. Mostly it has that European problem where nothing is open when you want it to be open because you have insomnia or your period or whatever
MOE: In my case, both.
MOE: They are really really really into the environment here.
MEGAN: Does that mean no tampons or something?
MEGAN: Also, yes, I hate stupid laws in Europe where everything closes down and nothing is open on Sundays and crap.

MOE: No I mean, apparently there are organic tampons or whatever. No what it means is just that it seems to be all you read about, or like, I'm at this pub, and it's a stupid pub, like it seems very chain-y and airport-y, like the British version of ... what's a chain pub? Elephant & Castle or something. Only, you know, really stunningly horrible food, like you hear about. Anyway apparently the fish and chips are made with SUSTAINABLE COD. Like, good grief. And yeah I'm sure that makes sense. And I hate those laws too. I like the laws that say you can't have as many sales as you can in America, because I think price differentiation run amok is a big problem there, but there should be a law here that SOMETHING in every neighborhood should be open 24 hours, just to keep transplanted Americans sane.
MOE: Did you ever see that abortion movie? 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days?
MEGAN: No, I'm bad about seeing movies. I go through spurts where I see a bunch and then I go without for a really long time. It was around in my chaste period, so to speak. Also, I hate chain pubs and try not to go to chain restaurants, but, um, the homemade potato chips at Elephant and Castle have called to me, I won't deny.
MOE: It's about Romania and it's supposedly very depressing, even though I didn't really find it that depressing, except to the extent that the protagonist's boyfriend shared that very common boyfriend problem where he is totally clueless and that was depressing, but really the most depressing part was just how DARK EVERYTHING WAS and how night is dark and eerie in Europe in a lot of places.
MEGAN: I think that's more of a film meme than a reality. I never found Germany particularly eerie at night.
MOE: Yeah I'm trying to think of the name of the Irish pub chain in Philly at 15th and Locust or thereabouts. I can't believe I can't remember the name of this place. God I shouldn't have had white wine. And I found Vienna dark. Not eerie, just lifeless.
MOE: And then there's all those places with their communism etc. etc.

MEGAN: I believe you are thinking of Fado. There's one in DC, too, by the Verizon Center.
MOE: I'm intrigued by Frank Rich's use of an emoticon in his headline. Ah yes! Fado. God the food there is some fucking masterful cuisine compared to the meal I just had.
MEGAN: Oh, Frank Rich, angry women do not use emoticons.

MOE: ok so…what I was going to say before my fucking Wi-fi which I paid ten pounds for crapped out is that I guess we should discuss McCain's War College thesis.
MOE: Also: Condi chastising Israelis for all their ugly settlements, which is the topic of a new and good-sounding book called Palestinean Walks …and speaking of which a Palestinian birthday party was ruined by some Israeli soldiers recently and so there's that.

MEGAN: Ah, ok, well, so, John McCain's thesis. I read the whole thing. It's kind of interesting on its face, but the fact that he doesn't acknowledge in it having been one of the tortured men about which he's talking makes its central conceit a bit, um, torturous.
MOE: HA. You read the whole thesis? Seriously?
MEGAN: Yes. I, um, didn't have much to do yesterday.
MEGAN: It was interesting, it's basically trying to get at a manner for training troops to survive being POWs. The New York Times piece you linked to points out some factual inaccuracies, the most egregious of which is that McCain thinks that the men that "broke" the easiest were the ones that joined the war after the country turned against it but he's not correct on his timing.
MOE: Also, oh god, there's Obama's Fathers Day speech on absentee dads, and one noted absentee dad being Tim Russert, who like I told you yesterday reminds me of my own dad, ABSENT the ridiculous tie which is his signature. I thought Pareene's obit was sweet, but moving back to my dad he actually attended the War College, and moving back to the War College that is where John McCain wrote this thing
9:25 AM
MEGAN: Oh, God, Russert, dude, on MTP yesterday, Carville and Matalin and Brokaw were crying, and then his producer started and they had to run the tribute video two minutes early because no one could hold it together any longer.
MOE: Oh man, that is so fucking sad. Is there a clip?
MEGAN: Here's the end, as he struggled to keep it really together, but he literally broke down a little earlier.
9:30 AM
MOE: Oh god I can't watch that. I'm already dehydrated. Jesus.
MEGAN: The whole thing was really, really sad. Anyway, so, John McCain's thesis. Less sad than that.
MOE: Yeah I'm amusing myself now with stop sitting in the house watching SportsCenter and “Don’t get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation." Yeah, don't pat yourself on the back till your super sweet 16.
MEGAN: I mean, I think McCain has an interesting point about the need for better training, I think it's absolutely prescient when it comes to the idea that there were around 550 POWs and that the public's outcry about that small number of people allowed the North Vietnamese to hijack peace negotiations and the like.
MOE: Yeah, that was a very good point I hadn't considered as much, because I never even really knew the number. What was the breakdown between resisters and "collaborators"?
MEGAN: Many more resisters than collaborators.
9:40 AM
MEGAN: But my most favorite part, buried in the text, is this:

Many ex-POWs have stated that due to the length and divisiveness of the Vietnam conflict, if the policy of the North Vietnamese towards the captured Americans had been of strict adherence to the Geneva Convention the North Vietnamese might have returned a group of men who would have been grateful and sympathetic to their problems in that part of the world. Instead, a dedicated group of anti-communists have emerged from that ordeal.

But maybe I'm just influenced by the whole Gitmo ruling last week.
MEGAN: I guess, however, that the intervening years have changed John's mind.

"These are people who are not citizens; they do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have," McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said at a town hall meeting in Pemberton, New Jersey, yesterday. "There are some bad people down there."

MOE: Yeah that's what I'm reading now. So he doesn't think they should be tortured, because he was tortured, but the Gitmo ruling was "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country" because he…doesn't love democracy so much he wants to extend its rights to terror suspects…? What blows my mind about this shit is that the guys in Guantanamo are such a collection of clueless moderate bystandery wrong-place-wrong-time types. And which commenter pointed out OBL's driver's sixth grade education, not to bring it back to Obama's speech… anyway… it's just like, has he looked at the charges against these guys? I mean, McCain is a senator, he probably has access to the ACTUAL evidence against these guys.
MOE: He like knows how shit it is.
MOE: Oh also in the wake of massive protests the Saudis have finally agreed to produce more oil but they're telling Europe to lower their gas taxes. Which I guess have something to do with the $40 cab ride I took back to my hotel yesterday? Anyway, not bitter here. But anyway economists think if it weren't for speculators and the natural inclination of markets to hyperbolize these things oil would be $80 to $100 a barrel but what can you do.
MEGAN: Or he doesn't care because he's running for President and the far right hates the ruling so why not compromise his supposed principles yet again and say what he's supposed to say?
MEGAN: I love how the Saudis are all like, lower your taxes but you know they ain't lowering the royalties they get (aka, taxes) from foreign oil companies. Mmmm, hypocrisy smells soooo carbon-y.
MOE: Issue 1. But why? The only way he can win is by appealing to moderates who probably believe on some level this terror war thing was, as Frank Fukuyama pointed out, a bad idea, right? Or do feminists want Supreme Court Justices to the right of John Roberts? (Who btw did not take part in the case I guess?) (anyway) I have a headache and I need to post this.

• Tim Russert passed away this afternoon at the age of 58 after collapsing at his office. He had just returned from a trip to Italy with his wife and son to celebrate the latter's graduation from Boston College (and, out of respect, I'll refrain from quoting BU's obligatory cheer here). If there's someone at NBC who hasn't teared up in the last couple of hours while talking about him, I missed it. [MSNBC]
• The rest of the news is after the jump because I figured Tim deserved that.

• Mostly because the next story had to be about R. Kelly getting acquitted. Dave Chappelle: legal genius. [MSNBC]
• Oh, by the way, men are necessary because us ladies like being rescued. Bitch, I kill my own damn spiders, replace my own damn tires, get my own drunk ass in to bed and I have only once needed rescuing and I called the cops. One was a woman. [National Review]
• Iowa's going to be the next Great Lake, by the way. Countdown to mentions of global warming in 5...4...3... [Washington Post]
• Fuck it, it's Friday the 13th, Tim Russert is dead, R. Kelly is free, stereotypes about white knights and imperiled maidens will live on forever and I need to get to the motherfucking liquor store because I am out of rum.