Ok!
Missing in Action!

Us
"How He Tricked Her." If you care about The Bachelorette, then you may want to know that a body language expert found Ed Swiderski's eyes were full of lies. We don't care, so we don't want to know. Also inside: A source says that Bradley Cooper and Renée Zellweger are "100% seeing each other." The only reason they didn't say anything before was because he was seeing Jennifer Aniston at the same time, but wasn't as into her as she was into him. Rachel McAdams and Josh Lucas: Splitsville. Also inside: When Jon Gosselin was home with the kids, he only played with them when the cameras were rolling. The rest of the time, he was smoking and talking on his cell phone. Jon complained to a group of photographers outside his house: "They think I'm messing around and not a good father, but I'm on my cell phone all day working, trying to make money and take care of my kids." Sparklevamp Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart spent three nights together in his hotel room. An insider says: "They're not boyfriend-girlfriend exactly, but they've definitely hooked up." And the guy who plays Bella's dad says: "If they want to date each other, fine! Look, when you're that age, you're going to make mistakes. You're going to date people you probably shouldn't date. It's all part of the growing process." See, Twilight is real, and he's afraid Sparklevamp is gonna bite Kristen. Lastly: Jessica Simpson is turning to alcohol to deal with her breakup. She was smashed at Ken Paves' birthday party! Who among us has not gotten drunk at our hairdresser's bash? Ooh, and a source says John Mayer has naked pictures of Jessica on his cell phone, and showed his friends at lunch.
Grade: F (disemvoweling)

In Touch
"Angelina Humiliates Brad."
At the Hollywood premiere of Inglourious Basterds, Angelina "literally hogged the spotlight" from Brad, "making him look foolish." She was wearing a strapless leather cocktail dress, "and completely upstaged Brad." If she hadn't gone, the headline would have been: ANGIE ABANDONS BRAD. But since she showed up, there are six pictures of the two of them, with commentary like "Their tense arrival" and "Angelina won't stand back." (Fig. 1) There's also a picture of Angelina in her black strapless leather dress next to an image of Jennifer Aniston's Elle cover, where Jen is also wearing a black leather strapless dress and the subhead reads, "Angelina Stole Jen's Look!" Another spread has a collection of pictures in which Brad is made out to be an exhausted, heavy-drinking slob now that Angie is in his life. During their relationship, "He's gone from hot to haggard." And! In the table of contents, it says, "Angelina's Wearing Brad Down." (Fig. 2) Also inside: "They Look Like Mr. T!" (Fig. 3) Lastly: Ellen Pompeo is having a girl, if you care.
Grade: F (Morse code)

Life & Style
"They're Back On!"
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart shared a hotel room at Chateau Marmont from August 6 to August 8, and were spotted hanging out at various events all weekend. They were photographed separately taking smoke breaks on the room's balcony. The mag claims they had dinner on the hotel's back patio and were holding and kissing. A witness says: "The alcohol helped him shed his inhibitions and they could hardly keep their hands off each other toward the end of the evening." Though the cover says "Robert confirms he's dating Kristen," this is what they mean by that: Apparently New Moon costar Nikki Reed said something like "I saw the pictures [of you and Kristen]. I thought you were going to keep it secret" to Rob on an Alaska Airlines flight, and he said, "keep your voice down." Not exactly a "confirmation." Also inside: Kim Kardashian has dyed her hair — and eyebrows — honey blond. She says: "I definitely needed a change in my life… I have this whole new outlook and personality. It had transformed my attitude." Kate Hudson's biological father, Bill Hudson, is using the magazine to try and send messages to Kate. Moving on: "Khloé: I'm Not On Cocaine." This is a teaser for Kourtney And Khloé Take Miami, where you'll see that Khloé has coke in her bag. But she has a good reason! Lastly, Heidi Montag says: "I'm not wearing anything in the Playboy pictures. My skin is my accessory."
Grade: D (semaphore)

Star
"Divorce!"
The only source in this Sarah Palin "shattered marriage" story is Mercede Johnston, Levi' sister. She says Sarah and Todd are fighting all the time, and Todd ends up sleeping on the couch. Bristol used to tell Levi that Sarah and Todd would argue over the smallest things, like whose turn it was to do the dishes, and sometimes Todd would take off for days to his cabin in Eureka to get away from all the tension. Let's just remember that Mercede is 17 and is talking about her brother's ex-girlfriend's parents. She also says that after Bristol got pregnant, Todd and Sarah were yelling at each other a lot. Um, yeah. An Alaskan blog The Immoral Minority ran a headline: "Sarah And Todd Palin Are Splitsville." The blog claimed that Sarah had purchased land in Montana and was considering relocating there with the kids. Plus! After a fight, Sarah threw her wedding ring into Lake Lucille. An insider says the couple might come to a financial agreement for Todd to stay with Sarah and "give the impression of a loving husband" — at least through her book tour next year. Related: 15-year-old Willow Palin was caught on video drinking vodka (with a chaser of Mountain Dew) and taking a hit off of a joint at a party. Also inside: Like us, Star now watches for Photoshop of Horrors (Fig. 4). Unsolicited uterus update: Pénélope Cruz "bump alert" picture shows a very small baby "bump." Blind item: "Which singer is such a diva that she wears bright red lipstick to bed? She recently made her hubby go out at 10pm to get a replacement tube of her favorite shade." More about Kristen and Rob's "Hot Hotel Hookups!" The story begins thusly: "When Robert Pattinson's room is rocking, don't come knocking." Rob Pattinson had a guitar delivered to his hotel room so he could serenade Kristen Stewart. The magazine asks: Did Rob put a ring on it already? Kristen was seen wearing a ring on THAT finger. Gosselin news: "It's All-Out War!" They're doing things to annoy each other: Kate threw out Jon's favorite grill and most of his favorite shirts, except for one "special" Ed Hardy shirt, which she slashed with scissors and left out for him to see. She's been threatening to get rid of his tractor. She put up a no smoking sign and taught the kids to chant "smoking kills," and she taunts Jon by saying he's fat and ugly. Jon's been leaving cigarette butts lying around the house, and Kate's sensitive about her age, so he calls her "granny" to see if he can make her cry. Next: True Blood's Alexander Skarsgård played a suicidal transvestite named Geert in a 2006 indie flick, check out a pic (Fig. 5)! Lastly: Jessica Simpson is planning to write a multi-million dollar tell-all, which will spill details about her ex-boyfriends and her "love luggage" — her weight. Tony Romo liked her to dress up as a cheerleader, but with garter belts, stockings and high heels. And he'd bring food into the bedroom. John Mayer would talk baby talk in bed and was always begging her to experiment — he wanted her to go to sex parties "just to look." Jess might reveal how she fell for Dane Cook while filming Employee Of The Month "when he made her laugh so hard he made her pee her pants on the set." And! A source says: "She'll probably write about one wild night she had with Jude Law in New York, and how close she came to being his baby mama."
Grade: C- (braille)

Fig. 1 (click to enlarge)

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Ms. St. John applauds what she calls Palin's "declaration of independence as a woman" because there's a chance she'll do what's right and keep from disenfranchising and emasculating men. She doesn't think it's a big chance, though. Why?

Palin is an avowed feminist. As such, her husband and children have to fall in line behind her career goals. If everyday actions speak louder than words, then she holds more affinity with her pro-abortion feminist sisters than with her conservative sisters nursing babies at home.

Crazytown assertions aside, Palin has what might be called a difficult history with her "avowed" feminism. She belongs to an anti-abortion group called Feminists for Life: she told Katie Couric she was a feminist; she later told Brian Williams she didn't like labeling herself like that. What Palin is, no doubt, is a beneficiary of feminism — and that's what St. John has a real issue with.

St. John, no doubt, is horrified at the fact that Christian women view Palin as a role model and her own ideological comrades-in-arms cheered her (until recently, anyway) successful combination of working, parenting and being a spouse. This just won't do!

Sarah Palin represents the empirical self of millions of women working outside the home. They live vicariously through her supposed success. Seeing such a woman extolled gives credibility to their frantic lifestyle juggling job, children, husband, church, and housework.

It has been said that part of Palin's appeal is that her family is like so many other families. She is today's American woman, who works outside the home and does it all. Whose daughters get pregnant out-of-wedlock. Whose husbands wear the aprons.

Have we gone insane? Is this something to celebrate?

Ha! Yes, if Sarah Palin had just stayed home and cooked and cleaned for her family with no other thoughts of self-actualization, Bristol would have never gotten pregnant! And she's just giving false hope to women that they can be good mothers and have jobs! Besides, who want to see Todd in an apron? (Don't answer that.)

As far as St. John is concerned, Palin's sins are worse for our nation than even the scourge of Teh Gheyz, and will likely result in hellfire and brimstone raining down upon us. Or maybe toads.

It has been said that the sin of homosexuality precedes judgment on a nation. Yet, the first instance in Scripture where we see a curse enacted was in the Garden of Eden when a woman took the lead and a man followed. Does this not describe America today? "As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them," says Isaiah 3:12.

The real problem, of course, is that Palin doesn't just oppress Todd: she oppresses all men by not staying home where she belongs.

Has America become so emasculated that our only hope of getting another Ronald Reagan into the Oval Office is to idolize Palin as a political Madonna? Hardly.

Do we have no men who can match her intelligence, charisma and leadership skills? To the contrary, we have better.

Have conservatives become so desperate for a passionate leader that they forsake their most basic values of home and hearth? Yes...

Not terribly many liberals would argue that Palin doesn't represent a level of desperation within the GOP, but it's not because they're "emasculated" into accepting a woman, they're just tired and out of ideas and leadership (and money, which Palin can raise by the truckload).

But St. John isn't quite done railing about how terrible Palin's political profile is for men.

As conservatives continue chanting Sarah Palin for president, are they disenfranchising the men capable of stepping up to the plate in 2012? There are many strong conservative men better qualified to lead the greatest nation in the world.

I pray these men rise to the fore and that Sarah Palin begins to turn her heart toward her home.

Again, it's hard to argue that there are men (and women) in and out of the GOP who are potentially more qualified than Palin to lead this country — I mean, more than half the country voted for Obama, after all — but it's not because she's a woman who ought to let men take their supposedly rightful places of power while she stays home with the kids.

But if St. John is soooo concerned that women trying to influence the direction of this country will cause God to destroy it... maybe she could try staying home and shutting her mouth? Just to see.

WND's Olivia St. John: "I Pray" That "Avowed Feminist" Palin "Begins To Turn Her Heart Toward her Home" [Media Matters]

Related: Palin Opens Up On Controversial Issues [CBS]
Palin's Switcheroo on Feminism [ABC News]

Earlier: Sarah Palin: When Choosing A Woman Might Not Be Choosing For Women
What Sarah Palin Says About Feminism

[Image via Runner's World]

Vivid's not exactly the first company to try to hitch its train to a woman in the news, and Carrie Prejean is hardly the first target of its exploitation. The company offered Nadya Suleman $1 million to star in one of its movies, and full medical and dental insurance for her family if she agreed to perform sex acts for them on an ongoing basis. Kick Ass Films offered Susan Boyle the same deal two weeks ago to film her professional deflowering. Porn producer Cezar Capone even had a run at Sarah Palin last year, offering her $2 million dollars to star in one of his "MILF" films, plus an extra $100,000 and a snow machine if she did it with her husband Todd.

Do these companies really believe that they are going to convince Prejean, Suleman, Boyle or Sarah fucking Palin to shed their clothes and fuck strangers on camera for money? Of course not. But they are exploiting these women and their celebrity, notoriety and ability to get the attention of the press to market their movies and their own names, and they're doing it, frankly, without the permission of their supposed targets. (It's interesting - and probably no mere coincidence - that, with the exception of Palin, the women targeted are either reportedly celibate and/or virgins.) or And even if these women did (in some alternate universe) agree to do such a film - as porn star Lorelei Lee told Violet Blue last year - it's not for the weak of heart nor the amateurs or people who haven't really considered what it means to become a sex worker.

A thought: If the porn industry wants to shed its reputation for exploiting or coercing vulnerable women, maybe a good place to start is to stop exploiting the images of women who did not and would not agree to be a part of the industry in the first place.

Miss California Offered Million Dollar Porn Role [TMZ]

Related: OctoMom Offered $1 Million To Make A Porno [TMZ]
British Singing Sensation Susan Boyle Offered $1 Million To Star In Porn Flick [NY Daily News]
Sarah Palin Offered $2 Million To Appear In Porn Film [Vancouver Sun]

Earlier: Sex For Money, Not Love [San Francisco Chronicle]

Bristol, appearing on GMA this morning, said she isn't "quite sure" how her personal experience conflicts with her new abstinence-only message. What she was sure about is that "abstinence is the only way you can effectively, 100% [...] prevent pregnancy." Is this a reversal of her earlier (and, frankly, more consistent with her own experience) position that abstinence is unrealistic? Not according to Bristol, who claimed she never said such a thing:

Bristol said her earlier words on abstinence were "taken out of context," and GMA's Chris Cuomo didn't press the issue, which is unsurprising in an interview padded with softball questions about Levi Johnston and Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impersonation. Today's Matt Lauer, who interviewed Bristol later in the morning, wasn't much better — in his sit-down with Bristol and, weirdly, her dad, he mentioned Bristol's earlier "unrealistic" statement but didn't actually ask her to explain her change of heart:

It was a little icky to watch Lauer ask Todd Palin, on the couch with his daughter and grandson, if he knew Bristol and Levi were having sex — at the same time, it was disappointing that Lauer let Todd totally sidestep the question. The weirdest part of the interview, however, was Todd and Bristol's different characterizations of Bristol's pregnancy. Bristol, holding Tripp, asked teens to "learn from my [slight pause] example." Todd went ahead and calls it a "mistake." Which goes to show that, as Lauer hinted, having a Teen Ambassador promote abstinence with her baby on her lap is kind of a strange choice. But The Candie's Foundation, whose "celebrity messages" include "Be Sexy: It Doesn't Mean You Have to Have Sex" and which counts among its spokespeople Jenny McCarthy of toilet ad and vaccine-hating fame, is no stranger to strange choices.

Update: On The Early Show, Levi Johnston disagreed with Bristol's new position, saying, "I don't just think telling young kids, you can't have sex, it's not going to work. It's not realistic."

Related: Bristol Palin Campaigns Against Teen Pregnancy [MSNBC]
The Candie's Foundation: History [Official Site]

• Though Barack obama told Americans nothing about forthcoming nominations, that doesn't mean there's nothing to speculate about! John Kerry, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson are lead speculative Secretary of State candidates, Robert Gates might stay at the Defense Department, Janet Napolitano could be headed to Justice and former eBay executive Steve Westly, the Governator or Kathleen Sebelius could end up at DOE. Discuss at your leisure — Obama certainly is. [CNN, Politico]
• The President-Elect has included sexual orientation and gender identity in his non-discrimination pledge on hiring, which is awesome. [ACLU]
• Harry Reid is a little pissed about Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman's Obama-bashing during his balls-out support of John McCain this election season — to say nothing of his current flirtation with Mitch McConnell and the GOP caucus. He is thinking of allowing the Democratic caucus to strip Lieberman of his committee chair, which Lieberman calls "unacceptable" and everyone else calls "no less than he deserves." [CNN, Huffington Post]
• Unlike the obstreperous Lieberman, Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd is stepping aside as chairman because he's confident of the new Democratic majority and, likely, because of his continuing ill health. Sadly, this means no more "barbaric" speeches. [The Hill, YouTube]

• In what may be the most disturbing charitable donation of all time, some of the clothing items the Palins need to return to the RNC include Todd's silk boxers. And you thought her plane left skid marks when it left Phoenix! [Washington Post]
• To counter that image, Sarah Palin's going to do an interview with Greta Van Susteren. Nope, don't think that image is getting out of my head regardless, sorry. [LA Times]
• Right-wing South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is pissed that McConnell isn't going to expel Senate Ted "McBribe-y" Stevens from the Senate during the lame duck session. Yes, Virginia, some Republicans do have principles. [Politico]
• The best quote that ever has been said or ever will be said about Rahm Emanuel: "Emanuel, on the other hand, is a drama queen; seething, foaming Mamet production; a big mouth; and a calculating mensch who loves nothing more than to stoke the feed bag for press-corps noshers." Oh, this is going to be an epic White House. [Politico]
• Obama's aunt — who the right-wingers discovered far too late has overstayed her deportation order — has decided to fight in court for the right to remain in the U.S. She's not in great health, reportedly, which would seem like humanitarian grounds to let her stay but our immigration system isn't exactly known for being humanitarian in nature. [MSNBC]
• Neither are Americans, two of whom in New Jersey set a cross ablaze on the lawn of an Obama supporter. Racism: officially no longer confined to The South. Please make a note of it. [Editor & Publisher]
• In slightly better news, there is talk about automatically registering every eligible citizen to vote and expanding early voting so that this ACORN-caging-voter challenges nonsense can finally just end. God, how awesome would that be? [NY Times]

Election Night:
Michelle Obama gets a slinky dress that shows off her awesome clavicles in Democratic blue.

For Cindy McCain, how about a frilly, ruffled number that says: "Don't worry, I've got my own stuff going on"?

Sarah Palin gets a plain, fitted black dress so that she can stay on message, you betcha.

Inauguration Day:

For Michelle Obama, a shift with a floral print. White House rose garden, here we come!

For Sasha and Malia Obama, pretty cardigans and skirts to complement mommy's dress.

Cindy McCain would rock the hell out of this Republican red shift dress.

Sarah Palin never really wears patterns, but she could pull off this snow leopard print dress. It's not real snow leopard, but with her, you never know!

I'm seeing little Piper Palin in velvet.

Willow Palin gets a youthful plum silk chiffon.

Preggers Bristol Palin needs an empire waist dress to accommodate that belly.

As for Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain, Todd Palin and any Biden/Palin/McCain sons, J. Crew offers this:

Just add tie. And pants.

J. Crew [Official Site]
Michelle Obama Shops At J. Crew, Buys Online [AP]
Michelle Obama: We Buy the Clothes We Wear [People]

LATOYA: Good Morning, Sunshine!

MEGAN: I watched the sun rise this morning, and not in the hot stayed-out-all-night kind of way, but rather in the "shivering in the cold waiting for a dog to pee" kind of way, and I liked it about as much as it sounds like I did. I get the sense that you are more of a morning person than me.

LATOYA: That I am! I tend to wake up around this time anyway — but, look on the bright side. I start falling asleep during prime club hours, so there's a darkside to morning chipperness.

MEGAN: Even my friend's dog was all like, you really want to walk me this early? Ho-kay, if you insist. And he's already back to sleep.

LATOYA: Hahaha — you can join him soon. Let's start with the pride and joy of my Sunday — Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama. Meet the Press never sounded sweeter to my ears.

MEGAN: Except that even my mom last night — who doesn't watch it — was like, can you believe that Rush Limbaugh says it's just because he's black? It's starting to get a little amusing, she's got this growing mental list of all our relatives and neighbors who listen to Rush Limbaugh because they've started admitting to it, and I can practically hear her crossing names off her Christmas card list. She is so offended that people she knows buy his crap, almost like she didn't really know that actual non-crazy-seeming people listen to him. What I want to know is: does this mean every white person that supports McCain is just doing it because they're both white? Are only Michael Steele, J.C. Watts and every white person that backs Obama racially justified?

LATOYA: It only counts when minorities do it — white people obviously have in-depth reasoning skills, the likes of which we pigmented folks do not have. And seriously? Can we talk about how racist that assumption is? People are going to try and act like it's just Rush Limbaugh talking crazy, but come on now — I know you've been hearing the same thing I'm hearing. I get at least one comment a day (that is insta-deleted) where they want to say something like "blacks are the real racists — 90% of them are voting for Obama!" Yeah, that's right. And 90% of us voted for Clinton. And 88% of us voted for Kerry. Only 10% of Blacks are Republican.

MEGAN: Oh, right, God knows there would be NO FUCKING REASON for African-Americans to ever vote for Obama otherwise, y'all would totes be voting for McCain if the Democrats had a white candidate. Or, you know, not.

LATOYA: For real — I mean, Colin could have broke out a thesis statement on the trends of presidents and vice presidents in this country, and a detailed evaluation of his own voting records, alongside a side-by-side analysis of McCain and Obama's platforms with his comments in red ink - and someone would have still been like "yeah, he just voted for the black guy."

MEGAN: Fuck class warfare, wtf is up with those people thinking there's a race war going on?

LATOYA: They're a little early with calls for a race war. They call us minorities for a reason.

MEGAN: Well, I don't want to be on their side, obviously.

LATOYA: Most of us aren't dumb — like Chris Rock said, there's a LOT of white folks out there. We might be able to reclaim Chocolate City, and a couple towns here and there, but we'd lose the war. Uh -oh, Megan — you can't go switching sides now. You got drafted.

MEGAN: Fuck drafted! I swear, my family has been in this country for long enough, there's no way that there's not some non-white in me somewhere.

LATOYA: You know the Army of Joe Six Pack doesn't cotton with quitters!

MEGAN: Joe Sex-Pack will get drunk on his Genny Creme Ale and I will sneak off. Uh, Freudian slip there.

LATOYA: Ha — I noticed. Yeah, I'm sure you can play the one drop rule to your advantage.

MEGAN: Hell, they would. They wouldn't want me, anyway. Rush Limbaugh makes my Tourette's act up. He speaks and I'm all like "Fuckity fuck fuck FUCK!"

LATOYA: But speaking of Joe Sixpack — uh, did we ever find out who this person is? We outed Joe the Plumber. Now I wanna see Joe Six Pack.

MEGAN: Joe Six Pack is they guy with the beer belly, sitting on his porch smoking a Winston and drinking said six pack by himself while listening to Rush Limbaugh and muttering under his breath. No microbrews for him! No elitist bottles! Down with the fancy beer conspiracy! He likes his good old American Molson!

LATOYA: The Kitchen Table blog has some good insight on this. Dr. Yolanda Pierce writes:

"When only Joe Six Pack becomes the target audience for political commercials, tax cuts, legislation, and economic incentives, we ignore the fact that most of this nation does not fit this profile. And finally, we ignore the fact that despite the rhetoric, none of our current political candidates currently fit the Joe Six Pack mode, although some of them have come from humble beginnings. When Sarah Palin indicated that her retirement portfolio lost $20,000 in one week (which means there was much more in there to begin with), she lost her street credentials as a Joe Six Pack wife.

She also mentions she thought "six pack" was slang for abs, but obviously that is out the window in '08.

MEGAN: Yeah, um, Sarah Palin ain't talking about the guy who spends hours at the gym to perfect his abs, though I'd be she would "tolerate" him. She's talking about the guy who drinks 'em. Oh, should we go for verisimilitude? I got my retirement account statement in the mail this weekend. Shall we see in real time how much I lost?

LATOYA: Yes, let's! Help me assuage my guilt over not funding my retirement account yet. (Bad, lazy, self employed consultant!) Then again, maybe just keeping that money liquid was a good idea.

MEGAN: Okay, to put it into context, this is my 401k from two jobs ago, and I only worked there 7 months. I have 80% in stocks, 15% in bonds and 5% in a money market. I lost $326.27. (That's just third quarter, I'm down 20% YTD.)

LATOYA: Ow. Though I would say that if you lost $4. Losing things is not fun, especially when it's money

MEGAN: But that is a Joe Six Pack amount of loss, thank you very much Sarah Palin. It's fake money, I can't even touch it for another 40 years unless Obama wins. Ahem.

LATOYA: Oh boy. Maybe you need a second job. You know, whatever's left at this point. Keep telling yourself that.

MEGAN: That is how I'm not crying. I don't want to know how much my other 401k lost, that's where most of my money is. Also, how happy am I that I was too lazy to take my accountant's advice last fall and start a new 401k? By the way, that means Sarah and Todd had about $150,000+ in their retirement account, assuming equal rates of loss. I'm betting they had more though.

LATOYA: It's ok — you love capitalism. No pain, no gain! If the markets fall, it's all part of the process. You aren't some dirty rotten socialist! Woman up!

MEGAN: I might be a closet Muslim, though! I love, by the way, the way that no one says aloud what this is supposed to indicate:

But some of the other older white diners looked surprised and slightly uncomfortable as Obama stopped at their tables to shake hands. “I’m surprised, but I’m not going to say anything else,” said Pat Smith, who was joined by her husband.

A group of six retired women said they were mostly Democrats — but mostly undecided about how to vote.

“I have to pray about it, think about what’s best for our country,” said Dorothy Buie, one of the women

That's code for "uncomfortable shaking hands with a black man."

LATOYA: Umm-hmm — if you've been paying attention, is clear what's best for our country. Major thinking conservatives are breaking with their own party. All you got left is the people who will drive America into hellfire and hatred headfirst. But no, no - stay afraid of the black man. It's ok — no one needed that commie healthcare scheme anyway.

MEGAN: Who needs health care when you can have tax cuts!

LATOYA: If you can't reach health insurance with your bootstraps, you don't need it!

For starters, the inquiry surrounded the firing of Monegan, which has been ruled legal. This will allow her to claim — as she's doing — that the legality of her consequential actions has been upheld. Furthermore, her other actions — which she's claiming were technically outside the scope of the investigation — aren't likely to have many consequences other than in terms of public relations and were completely ineffective. Wooten remains a trooper, never got denied his worker's comp and no one besides Monegan ended up on the outs. She'll be dirtied, slightly, by the allegations that she attempted to get her former brother-in-law fired, but most people pretty much already knew that she did that.

If she and her advisers were smart, they would have made much more of the restraining order her sister filed, the ugliness that supposedly came her way, the events that Wooten showed up at that he was asked to stay away from, and generally painted her as so legitimately concerned for her own safety and that or her sister's that she maybe went ever-so-slightly over the line in trying to make sure no harm came to her sister or her own family. Luckily for those of us that don't want to see people sympathize too much with her, her advisers came from the locked-down, deny-everything school of political management and thus were unable to see a better narrative than "she didn't do it" and now that it's confirmed that she did, they're not going to have an easy time finding a new narrative.

Though, it is kind of ironic that she was claiming that she fired the guy for going to Washington to lobby for more money to combat domestic violence when what kicked this all off were allegations against Wooten (that were never proved) of domestic violence.

Alaska Inquiry Concludes Palin Abused Powers [NY Times]
Branchflower Report [NY Times]

ANA MARIE: Greetings from Milwaukee's FINEST hotel.

MEGAN: You're at a Marriott, aren't you.

ANA MARIE: But you know, I had to wait, like 90 minutes for my luggage last night. I didn't get a king size bed! There is no creamer in my in room coffee! WIRE COAT HANGERS!!!! Actually, we're at "The Pfister," which has led to many attempts at humor from the traveling press corps. Personal favorite? "Pfister? I hardly knew her." (Hi, Sasha!)

MEGAN: See, I prefer wire coat hangers to the kind that don't come off the rod, which it's just like: really? I'm going to steal a hanger? Fuck you.

ANA MARIE: Actually, the coat hangers are fine. And there's a robe. That was all a rather extended segue into Alex Balk's rather awesome rant about a certain campaign journalist's peak at "how the other half lives." That someone would — apparently unself-consciously — use the title of a book about the lives of the desperately poor to describe the life of a pampered campaign journalist is... gosh, the word "ironic" is overused, huh I admit: I have complained about such things as HAVING TO GET UP EARLY. Or WAITING IN LINE.

MEGAN: Not that I like mornings. Or other people in my way.

ANA MARIE: Totally! It sucks!

MEGAN: Or pretty much anything before coffee.

ANA MARIE: But you know what? I am staying in Milwaukee's finest hotel. And I'm not being sarcastic.

MEGAN: I used to work for a Milwaukee-based company. It's really not a bad town. It's way better than Lansing. Plus, you really can get cheese with pretty much everything you'll eat there.

ANA MARIE: But to anyone complaining in public and unironically about pretty much anything inconvenient about life on the trail gets one response from me: I bet they deliver the luggage right on time in Baghdad, asshole. Seriously: More journalists have died covering that illegal war than any other international conflict. So if you are unsatisfied with the food in the file center, I am sorry. And this is just staying in the realm of "other bad jobs IN JOURNALISM you could have." If we went in the direction of "thankful for having a job at all" I could get a little angrier. Oh, and I've just made a discovery! Outrage is as good a pick-me-up as coffee.

MEGAN: Yeah, asshole, come blog with me! My couch can totally fit two people and I guarantee you won't have trouble finding your bags because my apartment is small. Also, I mean, like, has that guy not traveled other than for work? My sister went on her honeymoon and the airlines lost her luggage for two days.

ANA MARIE: Oh, and did I say "other bad jobs in journalism"? I meant "other jobs you could have in journalism which is rapidly shrinking pool thanks to the ever growing trend of treating news as entertainment and otherwise not putting any money at all into actual investigative reporting but instead spending $50k a month to keep you on the trail covering Barack Obama from the confines of a slightly off-smelling CHARTER PLANE."

MEGAN: He should be thankful it's not a bus.

ANA MARIE: A bus that people the color of certain presidential candidates used to sit at the back of. I suppose we should move along. But if I see Dean Reynolds today, I will ask him if he slept well on the pillow top beds here at the Pfister.

MEGAN: Why, so we can state obvious things like McCain's mortgage buyout plan will cost taxpayers money? Let alone make the government the entity responsible for foreclosing on people?

ANA MARIE: Oh god. Well the good thing about McCain's plan is that it depends on him being elected president.

MEGAN: But he's that one with the stones to bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran which we're obviously going to need to do.

ANA MARIE: Well I was worried we'd look silly going bankrupt as a nation spending on only two wars. Three? That makes us look like at least we have a reason.

MEGAN: Well, if we actually gave a shit about nuclear proliferation we might have had 4, but since it's all about posturing and hating on those of the Islamic faith, we might keep it to 3.

ANA MARIE: (Side note: apparently outrage+hangover is a worse combination than coffee+hangover because I'm kind of nauseous!)

MEGAN: Not including Pakistan, of course, we would never attack Pakistan, what with its stable and Democratic government run by a kleptocrat with little intention of hurting his personal access to power and money by reining in Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents on the borders that are attacking American troops in Afghanistan. There, well, that's a time for diplomacy.

ANA MARIE: But Megan, they're all BROWN (ish)! Can't add NoKo to the list just based on that? Well, Pakistan is a failed state.

MEGAN: It totally was (not) when Musharraf, our Great Ally, took it over in a political coup.

ANA MARIE: I am too hungover to even roll my eyes.

MEGAN: Also, do you think anyone in our foreign policy establishment has looked around and gone, hmmm. Maybe the reason countries like Iran want nukes is because when countries like Pakistan get them —regardless of their politics or warlike nature — America starts teabagging their leaders?

ANA MARIE: (And drinks last night were, of course, bought on the tabs of various major news organizations. BUT THEY DID NOT HAVE BASIL HAYDEN AT THE BAR, so I'm pissed.) Or, you know, countries like Iran want nukes because we have them?

MEGAN: My hangover is brought to you courtesy of a $9 bottle of Greg Norman Syrah bought at the grocery store. My outrage is from 2 years of a foreign policy Masters program.

ANA MARIE: I love Greg Norman wines! I had some GN chard on Tuesday. At the PF Changs in Nashville. Where dinner was courtesy of a nice Secret Service agent. BUT THEN IT RAINED. FUCK YOU, UNIVERSE.

MEGAN: Well, it was after Labor Day, presumably you weren't wearing white.

ANA MARIE: I haven't worn white since my thighs grew to their current size.

MEGAN: Best headline to a boring story we'll get all day: "Todd Palin had unusual access to wife's staff."

ANA MARIE: His wife has a staff? I thought we only made transgender jokes about Hillary! Yay, progress!

MEGAN: Also, I guess we now know what kind of kicky sex she was with "Driller" who I think the Secret Service probably should have dubbed "Drillee" if this is true.

ANA MARIE: I'm just glad women in power no longer have to be kind of butch in order to have people suspect they have a penis.

MEGAN: Well, they are pretty easy to buy these days, except in Mississippi.

ANA MARIE: And Scalia is so pissed about that. I see Hannity re-upped with Fox. So, you know, the nation is safe. In the sense that Colbert will not be cancelled for the next whatevermany years.

MEGAN: I think Scalia is pissed at the proliferation of sex toys because he blames them for not getting any ass. When, really, even lacking a sex toy, I would not ever have fucked Scalia. I don't think I'm alone in this.

ANA MARIE: Okay, I have met Scalia and I found him charming. But I also — in my single days — was not a stranger to sex with guys that made me hate myself. (Thank you Chris for saving me from that!)

MEGAN: You know, I actually thought about it and there's not anyone I hate myself for fucking. But I am also really egotistical, so it might have just not made a dent.

ANA MARIE: I actually argued with Scalia about partial birth abortion. At a party.

MEGAN: And? Did he argue back?

ANA MARIE: He basically tolerated my and my friend's drunken ranting with good humor. When he probably could of had us arrested. Or killed. Quick side note: I was once telling this story the daughter of one of our major presidential nominees and she asked, "Who's Scalia?"

MEGAN: Ok, but, I mean, it's not really fair to ask Malia to know these things.

ANA MARIE: Hint: this daughter had skin that could not in any way be described as "dusky." To be fair, Malia was really articulate when she defended the Kelo decision.

MEGAN: Anyway, should we discuss the new Ayers ads?

ANA MARIE: Christ. Here's the thing — and I know you might/will definitely disagree — what's weird about the Ayers shit is that, of all the things you could use to draw Obama's judgment into question, the best you can come up with is Ayers? Serious? Because I honestly think the 20 years he spent in Jeremiah Wright's church is a more interesting question. I ultimately don't think it changes my mind about voting for the guy, but it's a more interesting question.

MEGAN: Well, I mean, I don't disagree with you that there are better rational things but I think the Ayers think allows McCain's campaign to repeat the word "terrorist" over and over again and you know people ain't thinking some white college professor dude.

ANA MARIE: Yeah. Tho I don't think McCain actually focus-grouped that. Then again, he didn't have to.

MEGAN: It's like a twofer. It's hard for people to articulate why it's racist and wrong and it engenders the responses you want.

ANA MARIE: And the really funny thing? I don't think anyone on the campaign actually put any thought into that strategy. It just sort of happened! Like casual racism everywhere.

MEGAN: I don't know, this is the team of political strategists that gave McCain a black baby 8 years ago. I don't think it's unintentional. Because, like you said, the Wright thing is more interesting and complex. And, God knows, McCain's got his own bad associates, so it's not like they're doing Ayers to avoid getting into Palin's religion either.

ANA MARIE: You're going to make me link to my article about how Steve Schmidt is not a "Rove protege" again, aren't you?

MEGAN: You can, but I wasn't necessarily talking about Steve Schmidt, either. The Bush 2000 team pre-dates Schmidt.

ANA MARIE: Interestingly, most of the Bush 2000 team is actually working for Palin.

MEGAN: Who is, naturally, the person out there hitting on Ayers the hardest.

ANA MARIE: Yes, that is suggestive. And not in a good way! (Unlike, say, the idea of Palin's "staff".)

MEGAN: It's just another wink and a nod from Bible Spice.

ANA MARIE: Can we use that metaphor from now on, instead of "dog whistle"? Which is insulting to dogs.

MEGAN: Yeah, it's really unfair to compare dogs to racists.

ANA MARIE: Someone last night caught me watching Top Model on the plane and (there is a connection here) I had to explain that after a long day of covering an increasingly ugly race, pretty much the only things that help me unwind are really bad reality television shows and pictures of adorable animals.

MEGAN: I watched Project Runway, but, in the end, I wish I'd just stuck to Rachel Maddow.

ANA MARIE: NO DO NOT TELL ME
SPOILER ALERT
::HANDS OVER EARS::
LALALALALALA

MEGAN: Ana, I hate to tell you, there is no Santa Claus.

ANA MARIE: I am bitter and cling to my belief in a gun-toting Easter Bunny.

MEGAN: Quick! Name a publication you read regularly!

KAY: Wait, wait, I know this answer: "All of them!"

MEGAN: Alaska is a microcosm of America, dontcha know, they get the news up there, as such! (Except in the one part of Alaska that can see Russia, they don't really get the TV signals.)

KAY: Also I love this one: "Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years."

MEGAN: Well, at least that totally explains why she was reading John Birch Society claptrap.

KAY: I mean, I've had interns answer this question better than Sarah Palin did.

MEGAN: Ooh, is that a question you ask in an interview? That's a good one. Has anyone ever said, like, Maxim or Playboy? Because that's what my ex in college subscribed to, if he was being honest.

KAY: I think the trick is to answer that question with the publications you should read even if you don't actually. For instance, Palin was the governor of Alaska. Shouldn't she, um, list an Alaska newspaper?

MEGAN: You mean, like, the Mat-Su Frontiersman, to which she just also gave an "interview" via e-mail? Don't worry, you don't have to read it, it's basically just the same talking points her staff normally has her parrot!

KAY: Well, supposedly she's saving herself for local media on the campaign trail ... except she's not really on the campaign trail either.

MEGAN: She's in Arizona, debating Randy Scheunemann... McCain's foreign policy adviser! Do you think they're debating the merits of the bailout?

KAY: Maybe she's trying to convince them that she knows the economic pain and suffering of Real America (TM) in this financial crisis like she did in that interview with crazy-right wing radio host Hugh Hewitt.

MEGAN: The first time I looked at that, by the way, I totally saw "Hugh Hefner" and my brain kind of exploded.

KAY: HA. Maybe she and your college boyfriend read the same literature and that's why she didn't have an answer to Couric's question. In any case, the Washington Times reported that she and her husband had a combined household income of nearly a quarter million dollars.

MEGAN: Dayum, that's some bank for a seasonal worker and a government employee. Do fish in Alaska shit gold bullion?

KAY: Apparently. They also own "owns a 320-series Piper single-engine airplane and two boats, a 22-foot Pacific Skiff fishing boat and a 22-foot homemade aluminum fishing boat. He also owns two Bombardier personal watercraft, valued at about $7,000." Do you think Real Americans (TM) have planes and boats?

MEGAN: Okay, maybe this makes me not a real America, but how does one go about making a 22 foot aluminum fishing boat at home? Is there, like, a Wasilla community smelter?

KAY: Maybe Todd's smelting in secret.

MEGAN: With his copy of Playboy!

KAY: My favorite part though is they have five properties valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars each and they paid $7,662 in property taxes last year. I think those are the tax cuts for the wealthy at work.

MEGAN: Holy shit, that's amazing. I mean, okay , I'll give that maybe a family of 7 living in Manhattan, $250,000 and a half-million dollar home might be looking at an average level of disposable income after food and whatever.

KAY: Right, but Alaska ain't no Manhattan!

MEGAN: I know! It's not like Wasilla is some accessible-only-by-copter town where shit is flown in — although Kodiak was expensive, it wasn't as pricey as New York City. Like, my folks, in upstate NY: until my dad retired, 2 state incomes (since my mom went back to work after my sister went to college), one home, two cars. Their one house in upstate New York doesn't sit on a scenic lake or anything, but I don't think the view is why it isn't worth $500,000. And they don't make $250,000 a year. Or have "personal watercraft." I think my dad has a 2 seater miniature sailboat (a Sunfish?) that he keeps in the rafters of the garage and has owned since I was a kid.

KAY: I'm from Minnesota, which is probably a lot more comparable cost of living to Alaska, and if you have a half a million dollar home, you are well off.

MEGAN: Dude, if you have that kind of property here, you are living high on the motherfucking hog.

KAY: With lipstick?

MEGAN: We're talking the most expensive lipstick sold in Sephora.

ANA MARIE: I AM AWAKE!

MEGAN: Hooray! I am too. Are you appropriately grumpy about it?

ANA MARIE: Could be worse. We could be talking about BLOGGING AND POLITICS.

MEGAN: Like, oh my God, Ana, when are bloggers going to get ethics like real journalists?

ANA MARIE: As soon as we gain enough power to mislead a country into a stupid war.
The best thing about this election so far, I have to say, is not so much that the press has goaded itself into becoming more watchdog-y, but that they're doing the watchdogging with such petulant snarkiness. Almost like bloggers. From the NYT's editorial board blog yesterday:

What’s Spanish for ‘Lies’?
By The Editorial Board

It's "mentiras," I think, but I'm sure that's not the point!

MEGAN: It is way more than I thought, since I was too busy laughing at the thought of the New York Times editorial board getting so upset that John McCain was misleading voters. I guess it's a fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice and we'll publish a number of glowing pieces about how Saddam has nukes kind of thing.

ANA MARIE: Almost like he was exaggerating the threats posed by Iraq or something!
Fool me three times and we'll write a snarky blog post! THAT WILL SHOW HIM.

MEGAN: What if all the newspapers became actually snarky? Like, what if they decided that the only way to compete with new media was to out-blog us? Would The Onion have to become an outlet of serious journalism? Would democracy as we know it die? (You did see that article about how cynicism is killing democracy...)

ANA MARIE: WHAT IF NICK DENTON RAN THE NYT? I think we would develop a shortage of first-hand journalism. But EVERYONE would know who Julia Allison is.

MEGAN: You don't need to leave your desk to know stuff, obviously! Wait, are there people who don't know about Julia Allison yet? I thought she was part of the citizenship exam by now.

ANA MARIE: She's actually being launched into space soon. So that she's, like, one of the first things aliens learn about us. You know: Beethoven, math... Julia Allison.

MEGAN: They'll like her better than math, that's for sure. Gawker certainly does.

ANA MARIE: There's some kind of segue between Julia and this about Tucker Bounds, but I'm still coffee-less, so I'll let you make it. They really need to stop sending the twelve-year-old intern out to the morning shows. Or cable shows, I mean. I think I was thinking "morning show" because he's getting his ass kicked, in all cases, by heavily rougued faux-next-girls! GIRLS!

MEGAN: Actually, the man just needs to, like, fucking prepare before he goes. Your candidate is out lying like he's Dick Cheney or something, you gotta put your big boy panties on just like Ari Fleischer did and take it. I think the real problem is that Tucker Bounds likes getting spanked by hot women.

ANA MARIE: YOU CAN TOTALLY TELL. He totally knows the shit the campaign is trying to pull and just enjoys being called on it. "TELL ME AGAIN HOW WE LIE, CAMPBELL. MAKE IT HURT."

MEGAN: "I know I've been naughty, Megyn. Tell me I've been naughty."

ANA MARIE: Oh, breaking!

Senator McCain, on a round of seven morning shows, says on CNBC’s Squawk Box that he favors a 9/11-commission-style body to look into the Wall Street meltdown: “Everybody’s at fault here – the regulatory agencies, who were clearly asleep at the stick … That’s why I think maybe we ought to have a 9/11 commission type thing, because this crisis is very serious and … certainly a threat to our economy. … I understand the economy. I was chairman of the Commerce Committee that oversights every part of our economy. I have a far, far longer record of addressing these issue than my opponent does. And I certainly don’t think we should raise taxes in these difficult times.”

MEGAN: Is oversight a verb?

ANA MARIE: Look, he was a POW, ok? He is allowed to verb anything.

MEGAN: Wait, John McCain was tortured? I didn't know that.

ANA MARIE: Do you think somewhere lying around the WH is a memo entitled, "Wall Street Determined to Strike Inside the US"?

MEGAN: So, by the way, the 9/11 Commission report only took a year to commission and two to write, which means McCain's financial crisis commission will issue its report on the current financial crisis in 2011, which is 2 years before McCain wants to start pulling troops out of Iraq but possibly a little late to have any effect on the deepening financial crisis. But, read his lips: No New Taxes.

ANA MARIE: Speaking of which, I actually wrote someone on the McCain campaign yesterday to ask if the candidate had finished Alan Greenspan's book by now.

MEGAN: And did you get a response that wasn't vetted 15 ways from Sunday?

ANA MARIE: Er, yes.

MEGAN: I wonder if Steve Schmidt has taken away everyone's BlackBerries.

ANA MARIE: Maybe he's just installed some kind of filter. The answer I got was, basically, "Fuck off." It was a little nicer than that.

MEGAN: I think, then, that Steve Schmidt is controlling everyone's BlackBerries.

ANA MARIE: No, Steve would have actually written "Fuck off." He's from Jersey, you know, where that is a term of endearment.

MEGAN: Maybe that's the filter! He types "fuck off" and a computer somewhere translates it into something polite. I could totally use one of those, if they made it into one of those little boxes you use to talk after throat cancer surgery.

ANA MARIE: Speaking of cancer (I'm getting better at segues!): Bristol Palin's tanning bed.

MEGAN: I was just thinking, actually, that Todd looks equally suspiciously tan for the start of winter. But he works outside, if he wanted to submit to a tan line inspection to prove it's not from the bed, I'm happy to judge.

ANA MARIE: Wait, isn't he part Eskimo? Does that make your question racist?

MEGAN: He's like an eighth or something? I have been too busy noticing that he's cute and kind of silent which is how I too prefer the cute men.

ANA MARIE: And I think he's also controlling and a little insane. He's perfect for you!

MEGAN: Insane, definitely! I try to only date the mentally ill, it makes it so much easier to blame the break-ups on them. Controlling, well, that shit just annoys me in about 2 seconds. I dumped a guy once for questioning who I was talking to on the telephone.

ANA MARIE: So you probably wouldn't let him, say, write your state budget, huh?

MEGAN: I probably wouldn't let him know the balance in our joint checking account.

ANA MARIE: So here's a question: What are the gender politics of Todd being so up in his wife's business, as it were?

MEGAN: Well, metaphorically speaking, I am all for Todd being all up in his wife's business.

ANA MARIE: I am actually quite sure that they have hot Christian sex all the time.

MEGAN: But, other than that, it's a little weird on a state level. Especially because state budgets are really complex and stuff, and I don't recall Todd having a degree in public management or accounting. Or anything, really.

ANA MARIE: So when HRC got all up in Bill's (completely literal) business, that was ok... Because she was sharing expertise.

MEGAN: Well, only it wasn't, right? Because then she was a nagging, first-wifely harpy. At least that was the Republican talking point...

ANA MARIE: It was. And now the Dem talking point looks like it might be, "Todd is pulling all the strings, a bullying, first-dudely Machiavelli." From my friend Mike's admittedly amusing Salon piece, out last night:

"No one has accused Todd Palin of interfering in state business for his own personal benefit — instead, the situation has remained somewhat inscrutable, if not odd. According to local politicos and observers, he lurks around the capitol if he doesn't have anything better to do, which, since he works seasonal jobs in oil and fishing, is fairly often."

MEGAN: I love how he's "lurking." And that with 4 and now 5 kids at home, he doesn't have anything better to do.

ANA MARIE: But here's the thing: switch the genders — our standard mode of cultural critique this year, practically so mandatory that I'm thinking Chris and I will just go as each other for Halloween — and what do you think? "Sarah Palin, with 5 kids at home, has no right lurking around her husband's place of work like she has any idea what's going on."

MEGAN: I'm of two minds, as I am with everything else. On the one hand, free advice is good. Free decision-making, not so good.

ANA MARIE: I agree. It's just really awesome to see Rs having to grapple with this. I wrote a piece a couple of months ago about how, along with Woodstock and the moon landing, another major event McCain missed while in prison (yes, he was in a Vietnamese prison! true story!) was the women's movement, which is obviously where a lot of these questions were first framed on a national level. He's totally having to make up for lost time, in a way, but without any of the intellectual or historical work that went into the first round of discussions.

MEGAN: I think a lot of her politicians missed the women's movement in some pretty significant ways.

ANA MARIE: They weren't even really the "first" of course.
Well, yes. But do you get what I mean about how the R's new-found feminism is missing a lot of the context and thoughtfulness that, well, makes it a real argument rather than a talking point?

MEGAN: Well, I think the Republican party's newfound "feminism" is born of, oh, God, too early, what's the word that means you're taking advantage of the situation? Anyway, I think the Republican party hasn't found feminism.

ANA MARIE: You're right. Or, rather, they've just found the word "sexism."

MEGAN: They've found the power of the word sexism to attract a certain class of voters.

ANA MARIE: Well, weirdly, it's not! I mean, HRC supporters ARE NOT flocking to Palin

MEGAN: And they've discovered the sheer joy of Schadenfreude, watching all of this. No, they're not flocking if they are committed Dems, but I think plenty of Hillary supporters weren't committed Dems.

ANA MARIE: The sexism charge is mainly working as a proxy for the standard "media bias" charge. Which is as old as the hills, though not as old as John McCain.

MEGAN: I think the sexism charge is connecting hard with Republican women, bringing up old grievances with feminists and the feminist movement connected to their life choices. The idea that feminists disrespect women who stay home with the kids or are pro-life, those feelings.

ANA MARIE: So, really, they're just co-opting the words. We're not actually having a productive discussion.

MEGAN: It's politics! Productive discussions aren't allowed.

ANA MARIE: Which makes it a perfect time to segue back into Julia Allison!

MEGAN: Um, she called herself a journalist.

ANA MARIE: But, and this is important:

"I don't want people to think that I think I'm Woodward and Bernstein."

Which sort of makes me think she's actually Sarah Palin.

MEGAN: I believe journalism just died. Actually, I think she slunk into its hospital room, climbed on it's bed, slapped it around, smothered it with a pillow and then stabbed it 39 times for emphasis.

ANA MARIE: I was just thinking: I think Julia Allison had sex with journalism, THEN killed it. It's the best end journalism can hope for. It would be much worse to have sex with Woodward and Bernstein before dying.

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

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

MOE: Hey we can sort of start now if you want, though I'm still mostly reading through stuff. I just bought some beer because I think I'm the soberest person in Philadelphia right now. (The Eagles won a REALLY CLOSE game with the Rams today.) But here's something fun:

Mr. Rove said Mr. Schmidt’s increased authority — which came about after what amounted to a coup by Mr. Schmidt and other McCain aides with ties to the 2004 campaign, that gave him equal status with the campaign manager, Rick Davis — has been the best thing to have happened to Mr. McCain.

Oh God, Karl Rove. How do you do it, Karl Rove? You secure the election of a president so incompetent and widely loathed he decimates your party, then you leave the business for the media. Once in the media you commence bashing the media. You bash the media for asking questions about — not reporting, just asking around about — a rumor.

MEGAN: I am well on my way to non-Eagles-related drunkenness and I still cannot believe Steve Schmidt. Or Karl Rove. Like, seriously, did we watch the same speech? Only I thought it totally bombed and I talked to a shit load of Republicans at the wake today and people thought it fucking killed.

MOE: The sordid details of which are clearly, creepily reminiscent of the (much more easily refutable) rumor you disseminated to nastily defeat your boss's rival in the 2000 Republican primaries. And eight years later, said rival's distance from your old boss being the single-most compelling trait for Republicans to safely rally around, your old cronies take over his campaign, choosing a running mate whose most salient characteristic besides her nice bod is that she was the only member of the shortlist with a dearth of accomplishments deeper than that of your old boss in 2000, and then exploit the scurrilousness of said (much less obviously mendacious) rumor about said running mate's "personal" life to smear the "media"… (And who is paying for this? The media. "I'm not in the media, I'm around the media" is I believe how Rove put it…)

MEGAN: I wonder, honestly, if Rove even takes himself seriously at this point. I mean, the Palin Blake Slate is one of the reasons she was chosen.

MOE: Nah, he can't possibly. I actually find him more amusing than offensive at this point. Although maybe that's just because I read Safire today.

MEGAN: I did not read Safire today. I honestly feel like reading columnists is like a job that I don't get paid enough to do.

MOE: Don't let it hurt your teeth too much.

MEGAN: Honestly, at the point at which he says that Broder was the only fair pundit in attendance that night, it's hard to gag while I'm laughing so fucking hard.

MOE: And in shades of Friday's "Wow, I can't believe I'm going to calm myself down by talking about Bill O'Reilly," I entreat you to calm yourself down, after taking a gander over there, with the soothing relative sanity being preached by Chuck Krauthammer.

MEGAN: Oh, wait, he said something true:

The McCain acceptance speech reads better than it was read.

Oh, wait, here he's back to teabagging McCain:

That called for McCain to set aside his longtime reluctance to recount publicly his wartime suffering.

Ummmm, you know, except for his FUCKING MEMOIRS.

MOE: Oh shit, I am starting to find Palin so relatable though! Back in Wasilla they used to call her base of support the Liquor Cabinet.

MEGAN: Man, I would totally vote for the Liquor Cabinet.

MOE: Oh dear, and here her ex-brother in law admits he used a Taser on his 10-year-old son.

MEGAN: Ugh, that is super lame. Also, did you notice that after her announcement, she took her bouffant-y twist out? One of my reporter friends was like, she wears it like that to seem taller, she's gonna have to take it out for the campaign, McCain isn't tall enough.

MOE: Oh God Janice Min Janice Minnnn I'm boycotting you now:

“She out Obama’ed Obama with her speech,” said Janice Min, the editor of Us Weekly, who said the criticism of its coverage would pass soon enough. “She came on like a supermom who is not going to take a lot of guff from anyone. The way media works now, it is impossible to separate the personal from the political, and I think her role as a celebrity — how she does on that level — could have a significant effect on the election.”

Yeah I noticed it; I believe they decreed it to be Hepburn-esque in the New York Post. Here, exhibit five.

MEGAN: I didn't tell you! David Carr interviewed me for that piece at the Vanity Fair-Google party... and didn't use my quote. But it might be because I was drinking enough that Ana Marie Cox was like... um, what are you drinking? Because I was sort of lapping her on her alcohol acquisition. That's not the best sign, probably. Ok, I've found my first reason to be actively and yet completely unreasonably against Sarah Palin, other than the whole anti-choice thing: the use of multiple exclamation points:

"New administration finally allows new input, fresh ideas and ENERGY to work with the public to shape this city!!!"

MOE: Ok and I've found my first reason to reconsider my general assertion that the media hasn't been overstepping:

And yet, you get the feeling that at the end of the day, she could shake out that lustrous mane (longer than any other major female U.S. political figure's) and get it on with her man. She wears skirts that are quite form-fitting and often goes without stockings. As ZZ Top might say, she's got legs, and she knows how to use 'em. When Sen. John McCain introduced her at an Aug. 29 campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio, she was wearing open-toed red patent leather shoes.

That is the resident fashion critic at the LA Times.

MEGAN: Um, fucking gross. Also, I have peep toed pumps, that obviously means I'm a fucking whore.

MOE: Well you're obviously a fucking whore. But so am I and I have three pairs of shoes, everyone knows that.

But, oh my God and she is totally the Britney Spears of MILFs.

Palin held her baby in her arms as the warden drove a short distance around the facility, said corrections director Joe Schmidt, who sat next to Palin. A few days later, the governor got a warning from her public safety commissioner that someone had complained that she did not strap Trig into a car seat for the ride.

Palin dismissed the complaint as petty, and the commissioner, whom she appointed, took no formal action. But the incident shows the degree to which family and politics are bound together in Palin's career.

MEGAN: Yes, I mean, shoes do not equal whore, like, wtf is the LA Times fashion critic talking about?

MOE: Um, is that really what "the incident shows" Washington Post?? Or does the incident show that SARAH PALIN IS A TERRIBLE MOTHER WHO NOT FOR NO REASON AT ALL LEAKED AMNIOTIC FLUID ALL OVER THAT PLANE (or whatever.)

MEGAN: Ok, well, that doesn't say back seat or front seat, plus it doesn't mention whether she was breast feeding or not. I dunno, I got kicked out of a bar for being there with a pregnant friend who was like I JUST WANTED ONE GLASS OF WINE. Also, my vagina leaks a lot, particularly when I'm ovulating. I'm like sloppy, annoyingly wet.

MOE: Ugh that is so annoying. Didn't they read the story about how you can actually binge drink during pregnancy so long as you only do it a few times a month or so?

MEGAN: I don't know, they were complete assholic assholes about it.

MOE: OOOOOOH maybe you are just female ejaculating all the time like those women in those other stories who have orgasms all the time and have to strap miniature vibrators to their underwear just to get through the day????

MEGAN: Nah, when I was a teenager, I went to my doctor and she said it was normal. Like, it's my body being like IMPREGNATE ME!! But, fuck that bitch, I have an IUD.
Anyway, so if she got 600 votes in her first election and 900 in her second, then despite what Mitt Romney said, she didn't get as many votes in two elections as Joe Biden got in Iowa.

MOE: Hahaha oh Mitt Romney, please watch him now in this clip I made of that speech — well actually I had Nick McGlynn make it, thank you Nick — but I sat through the speech for the purpose of conveying in 42 seconds how insane it was. And I was pretty sure that crap about Biden getting fewer votes was, in Noonan parlance, "bullshit" but thanks for that.

MEGAN: I heard that and I was like... yeah, there's no way that's true. I used up 90 percent of my internet connection Wednesday night proving it.

MOE: Yeah, the thing that sucks about these Republicans is that they don't care if you fact-check them. I really wish Plouffe or whoever could just get up and say something equally outrageous and blasphemous like…hold on…like how about, "Sarah Palin ran a town that is smaller than many high schools!" Oh wait, that's true, hm, or like, what about "Sarah Palin's fiscally conservative policies managed to sink that tiny little town into enough debt to buy a brand-new Prius for every household in it TOO BAD HER HUSBAND IS THE TOOL OF ALL THOSE STUPID OIL COMPANIES." Ughhhhhh but that would also be true I think!

MEGAN: Oh, shit, another convention story I meant to mention: I met David Gregory in a Starbucks. He's replacing Matthews and Olbermann as anchors. Only, back at Wonkette (now erased in this server migration), I posted this video of him dancing to Mary J. and my friend Eric Brewer tracked him to a video of Obama dancing on Ellen and he had a poll about who was better and Gregory won. So, I was like, hey, so, like, I did this video of you and Obama dancing and he was like, oh, I totally saw that. And then I blushed and got totally awkies.

MOE: Well in lieu of lending credence to the scurrilous rumor I heard about Palin's heroic son in the Army I am going to ask you if you read today's Filkins piece in the Times Magazine about how Pakistan has turned into the Minneapolis of the Terrorist Convention and part of that is flaky Benazir Bhutto's fault for thinking it was a good idea to arm the mujahadeen back when we also thought that was a good idea, oh and did we mention history and that repeating itself thing, as comforting as it is to know that people make the same stupid mistakes and repeat all the same fuckups even in places where the average citizen doesn't consume a metric tonne of alcohol every month, it is not very comforting at all actually. Here it is. Obama was good on this issue the other night with O'Reilly, incidentally, not that O'Reilly had any idea.

MEGAN: I keep meaning to watch the O'Reilly shit, but my parents don't have cable. Anyways, anyone who elects Zadari deserves what they get, sort of like how I feel the overwhelming majority of people who either voted in GWB for a second term or — more likely — didn't fucking bother to vote better not now be bitching about their adjustable rate mortgage, I tell you what. Even people in Pakistan know he's a Thaksin-level corrupt asshat — and they probably have some idea who the fuck Thaksin is, too. Also, I object to the assertion that I consume a metric tonne of alcohol a month. That's why I mostly drink wine and hard liquor, to keep the tonnage down.

MOE: Oh god yeah Thailand, we could discuss that too, and Freddie and Fannie, THE NIGHT COULD LAST FOREVER. But what's hot right now? I thought the Times magazine story by Frum on Republicans and income inequality was interesting, if namely for its incongruity following a week during which the proverbial Bullshit, as Janice Min so eloquently pointed out, triumphed so decisively over Shit That Actually Matters.

MEGAN: Wait, income inequality? Get yourself some fucking bootstraps, yo. Does anyone even fucking know what bootstraps are?

MOE: Whoa, the origins of all the Palin kid names! Turns out that taken together they all come together to mean "CANNY ATTEMPTS TO DEFLECT OBVIOUS CORPORATE BEHOLDENNESS BY INGRATIATING SELVES TO NATURE FETISHIZING IDIOCRACY" or just "FLAGRANT POLITICKING RIGHT FROM THE START." Fuck I somehow didn't realize Sarah Palin married Todd because she was knocked up. That is so rouge cou.

MEGAN: I mean, it's like a month, tops that they knew. Chances are, like other super-Catholic friends of mine, they boned a little early and found out a couple weeks after the wedding regardless.

MOE: Nah nah Track was born eight months after they eloped "to save money." I dunno, it's funny. God, who gets pregnant the first time they have sex? Well, I have a friend whose parents did, but how crazy. Oh man it's getting late though I guess. And there's still so much! Damn the weekend for being over.

MEGAN: Well, luckily, I opened a magnum of wine! I got plenty of time!

MOE: Ok i'm getting another beer. Dogfish 90 minute IPA, not that they're sponsoring me. Not that i would LET THEM.

MEGAN: I've got a Yellowtail Cabernet. I am not going to pretend if a winery wanted to sponsor my blogging I would deny them the opportunity, but I would rather it be something non-corporate like Guglielmo or Hecker Pass, two of my favorite family wineries.

MOE: Ugh are we too far-gone — and too far down on the moral authority pay grade — to weigh in on Biden's belief that life begins at conception? Because personally I am inclined to say "well sure it does, so what" but you all know how paranoid I am about seeming "flip."

MEGAN: I mean, Biden's a Catholic, that's the party line, right? I just don't buy that. I don't believe it in the slightest. I'm not sure I believe in a soul. Potential life? Ok, maybe, but all evidence is that plenty of potential lives are ejected regularly from women's bodies. I just... I just don't buy that a zygote is A Life.

MOE: Right, well the "soul" is a different matter. As I think we might have discussed before, there's a genuine debate within the believers in souls as to how a soul could be formed at conception, then split into two separate souls two weeks later. Anyway "Life" …bacteria is life. Now human life is more important than animal life, but ughhhh if embryo life or fetus life was as precious as regular fully formed human life you would think there would be a huge public health campaign to finally put an end to the mysterious plague that silently kills as many as one in four humans before they even have the chance to get heartbeats! But there is not. And now I am tired.

MEGAN: My sister's fiancé was just asking when I was going to bed. I could stop drinking and try that out.

MOE: Yeah this is the longest Crappy Hour ever already I think. I've been drinking really slow and am still tired and I think that is a sign.

MEGAN: Ok, so, I'll check you at an abortion-esque ungodly hour on Tuesday.

MOE: Oh, but that David Gregory story was awesome.

MEGAN: There's nothing like embarrassing oneself in a Starbucks full of Republicans to make embarrassing oneself on the Internet seem totes minor.