MOE: So today Obama is a country club snob who sips a martini and alternately peddles a fruitcake version of the Constitution and makes snide comments about passersby while ignoring the beautiful date he brought for some new chick from out of town…ummmm is the whole campaign going to be this incomprehensible a tantrum? Why don't they go after the fact that his Christian outreach program consists of hosting things called "American Values House Parties"? That could at least make for some fun photoshop work.

MEGAN: Also, he wants to be President soooo bad, he's made up his own seal. But, to answer the question, yes, I think for the foreseeable future the campaign will just be one incomprehensible temper tantrum.
MOE: Do you think Karl Rove is trying to evoke a sort of Greg Germann image re Obama? Because Karl, I know you don't need me to tell you this, but it would be a lot easier to just play to the whole "latent racism" thing. But not nearly as fun!
MEGAN: People say they want clean campaigns, but they only pay attention and change their minds when it gets dirty, so it'll get dirty. Plus, you know, you've got pissed off PUMAs and the media is all sad that their golden boy refused to take public financing and so it's their disappointment that drives the coverage right now because they are literally 90% of the total population of people that understand what public financing is on a basic level and what it means that he didn't take it (and they're probably still mad that 99% of their viewers/readers didn't give a fuck about it).
MOE: oh my Goddd just when you thought David Brooks was sticking to his meds…

MEGAN: Whoa:

Every personal trait that led Bush to make a hash of the first years of the war led him to make a successful decision when it came to this crucial call [to have a surge]

I don't think that qualifies as "off his meds" as much as "on hard drugs this time."
MOE:

Bush is a stubborn man. Well, without that stubbornness, that unwillingness to accept defeat on his watch, he never would have bucked the opposition to the surge.
Bush is an outrageously self-confident man. Well, without that self-confidence he never would have overruled his generals. Bush is also a secretive man who listens too much to Dick Cheney. Well, the uncomfortable fact is that Cheney played an essential role in promoting the surge. Many of the people who are dubbed bad guys actually got this one right.

Ha ha, yes, dubbed. Oh for the rest of the world to be so attuned to the selflessness and idealism at the core of all Dick Cheney's actions.
MEGAN: Dick Cheney's just a peach! He knows what he's doing!
MOE: Anyway, I must confess, I think of stability in Iraq right now and I think not necessarily "failed state" or "fragile state" but honor killings and virginity checkups and the like. In that vein I don't think of coal consumption and "a distinctly American problem, as opposed to that of oil" automatically but according to this guy, James Hansen, I should. Do you sometimes wish all these nebulous global warming based arguments for minimizing waste and reducing consumption would do like the ice caps and wash away to reveal to Americans the secret reason everyone's trying to get them to stop driving Hummers and living in exurbs and swilling bottled water and gorging on high fructose nuggets of deforestation and animal cruelty which is to say IT'S JUST BETTER FOR EVERYONE THAT WAY??

MEGAN: Oh, I meant to tell you, HuffPo went out and couldn't find a single economist — not even a right wing shill — that would say that McCain's drilling plan would lower oil prices in the short-medium term?
MOE: Oh but to get to a point I was trying to make earlier coal is burned widely in China and I wouldn't call it "counterintuitive" to want to put an end to that. And yeah if the fucking Fox News booker couldn't find one I don't know how they were supposed to.
MEGAN: Two-thirds of our energy in this country comes from burning coal, and although the coal we burn is of high quality (and thus less environmentally unfriendly in terms of SOx emissions, if I recall correctly) than the higher-sulfur coal which is burned in China, it still ain't good. Someone on MSNBC yesterday, I wasn't looking at the TV so I didn't see who, said that we should try to become the Saudi Arabia of coal. I thought it was a bad talking point.

MOE: Did you read all the latest on our boychik Efraim Diveroli and the ambassador and the coverrup etc.

The day after the November meeting, the embassy’s regional security officer, Patrick Leonard, wrote an assistant an e-mail message obtained by the committee: “NY Times just arrived today and might be doing a story on this and it might get ugly. Ambassador is very concerned about the case.”
When The Times published its article on March 27, it was quickly forwarded to embassy officials. In an e-mail message to several embassy officials, Mr. Leonard said that the article focused on the arms company’s dealings. “No mention of Embassy involvement — thank God!”

MEGAN: HA! Wow, dude, way to remember that email is forever.
MEGAN: I guess Efraim wasn't the only dumb one in that conspiracy.
MOE: Also: I don't know dick about dick, but HOWWWW again does the expanding influence of an Iranian-backed Shiite cleric who, by the way, isn't opposed to exploding his fellow Shiites by the dozen for the sake of stirring up hostility towards Sunnis = the troop surge is a success? Seriously, Megan? You know me, I don't know much about this stuff, and I never really did trust that David Brooks since he made up all those facts about how you couldn't find a $20 dinner in Franklin County etc., but seriously…
MEGAN: OMG THAT IS THE SAME DAVID BROOKS?
MOE: Um, earth to Megan??
MEGAN: My friend gave me that book for Christmas like 7, 8 years ago and it was soooo annoying I never read it.

MEGAN: Ok, sorry. Wow, that guy's more of an idiot than I thought.
MOE: Yeah the only good thing Brooks ever did to my recollection was this Slate "Breakfast Table" with Thomas Frank that I will dredge up sometime for old time's sake. We could role-play it on Crappy Hour, in fact, but I get to be Tom.
MEGAN: Man, why do I have to be the stupid one?
MOE: David Brooks wasn't as stupid then, maybe he was taking Adderall who knows.
MEGAN: I don't know, that book sort of made me want to gouge my eyes out (sorry, Ed).
MOE: But no on second thought I'd rather be Brooks because I think his writing style would be easier and more fun to emulate. I just have a hardon for Frank.
MOE: Bobos in Paradise?
MEGAN: Yes, it's literally sitting on my bookshelf right now, staring at me.

MEGAN: Ok, the back cover quotes are like a rogue's gallery: Christopher Buckley declares "The self-loathing yuppie is dead," which, obviously not because Brooks kept writing after this.
MOE: Oh shit, so this girl: just about plain looking enough that…okay but seriously dude, what's up with the jacket? Also, who fucking holds hands? Ah the mystery of that particular specimen of humanity. Which reminds me did you read that New York Magazine piece on how Bill Clinton's speeches were actually written on a more elementary reading level than Bush's? Well that wasn't what it was about exactly obviously it was about Obama but you get what I'm saying.

MEGAN: Aw, I hold hands. I like holding hands sometimes. It's better than talking sometimes, and you know I love talking.
MEGAN: The thing that's amazing about Bill Clinton is his ability to take a speech, like, 10 minutes before he gets it, read it, and then give it with the right tone and everything that it sounds like he just wrote it, but perfectly. I guess it would make a kind of sense that it would be relatively easy language, etc, because most people don't like when you use big words.
MOE: Haha Reagan didn't know the names of many of his speechwriters.... Poor Peggy and her XXXes... did you ever read how she never really got to say goodbye to Reagan in Political Fictions?? It's heartwrenching really. And speaking of …speaking, you ever read this presidential speech? I read it after reading a particularly impressive TR introduction to this book on, of all things, the Mongols. Right now however I'm a little too hungover to parse.
MOE: Oh shit, segue but Charlie Crist: comes off rather well in this Deborah Solomon interview, but why does he look like he raided Tim Russert's closet before the photoshoot?

MOE: Wait, that
MEGAN: Hrm, it seems like we might have wanted to pay attention to this part a little more carefully:

The leaders of thought and of action grope their way forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clear-sightedly, that the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of value only as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes from devotion to loftier ideals.

MOE: Ah the beautiful and the lofty. Gotta bring back the lofty.
MEGAN: Well, we could just start by having some ideals, that would be good too.

MOE: Anyway The Man in The Arena was quoted by Richard Nixon in his resignation speech. Nixon who ushered in the end of the Meaningful Speech when he formally separated his speechwriting department from his policy analysis department, which sort of begs the question which department wrote his resignation but that, folks, doesn't appear to be on Wikipedia. Oh and Barack Obama referenced Man in the Arena when he brushed that dirt off his shoulder…

MEGAN: Well, speeches aren't about policy, they're about PR. That everyone before Nixon didn't know that was just their loss.
MOE: Well the point of the story was that style and substance are distinguished from one another to an unproductive degree these days in the political arena, which I would argue is actually the opposite of true these days, it's more like style is differentiated from "substance-esque style", but anyway sometimes a speech is just about sticking it to the haters and this is pretty awesome.

MOE: .

Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary.

MOE: Of course this speech is just one long scathing critique of the critics so maybe not that much has changed except that I didn't know "voluptuary" was a word.
MEGAN: Dude, and now I know why voluptuous is sort of insulting: "a person whose life is devoted to the pursuit and enjoyment of luxury and sensual pleasure." is the definition of that! So, like, if I've got curves, then it's all about luxury and sensual pleasure? Dammit, where's my luxury? Where's my sensual pleasure?
MOE: I sense a POST coming on!!! Dude, here's a good paragraph from that New York Mag story
MOE:

M
y relationship to Obama has been a complex cycle of enthusiasm canceled immediately by self-correcting cynical objections, canceled by self-correcting enthusiasm, canceled again by the cynicism, canceled by the enthusiasm. Is he really this good, I wonder constantly, or do we just need him to be? The speech that finally tipped my inner scale decisively toward belief was his least decorative: no refrain, little alliteration, no audience exploding at shouted catchphrases—just the man himself standing there solemnly, neutralizing the hysteria of a potentially career-killing scandal with the naked power of grown-up thought. With his race speech, Obama chose the riskiest path in American politics: to be conspicuously thoughtful. It would have been like Clinton, in 1998, giving a long contextualizing address to the nation about human sexuality, the international status of adultery, etc. It was one of the most encouraging political moments I’ve ever experienced.

MOE: OK now I really have to figure out what picture to use
MEGAN: Enjoy!

MOE: Okay dammit, I can't find that John McCain clip. I'm refusing to take meds today because I've got all this work to do later, and I'm all over the place. On one side of me this woman on Fox News is saying we're not in recession, that the media and a vast Hugo Chavez-led left-wing conspiracy has formulated this whole con to get people to hate business and the free market, and I seriously want to reach into the TV and strangle her. Also, bitch is so young she looks like Enron collapsed before her first Purity Ball. Also, and this is shallow, but the hair: needs a blow out. Who are you, Southern-accented apologist for the plutocracy? Maybe you should spend a little time reading business news before you go on airing your conspiracy theories!!!
MOE: But anyway John McCain went on Letterman and made some funny cracks (and some nine-times-warmed-over ones but no one seems to be clipping those) and meanwhile Barack Obama has been bro-ing down with the sports talk radio guys on Philadelphia's WIP.
MEGAN: Do you mean this clip? The thing I hate about candidates on late night talk shows is that I don't really need to know that they can be "funny" anymore. They're just sort of not.
MOE:

After Obama spoke about former Sixers legend Julius Erving - Dr. J - being a boyhood idol, Cataldi asked whether Obama would rather be the president or Dr. J.
"The Doctor," said Obama. "I think any kid growing up, if you got a chance to throw down the ball from the free throw line, that's better than just about anything."

The victim must experience intense pain or suffering of the kind that is equivalent to the pain that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body functions will likely result

Perhaps you can feel it in the strange way that the war is beginning to feel increasingly like a distant, historical event in two very different films. In Ellen Spiro's "Body of War" (co-produced and co-directed by Phil Donahue), video of the October 2002 congressional debate on the Iraq war resolution has that familiar-but-foreign quality of things now slipping into the near past. Politicians hector each other, with faces less wrinkled, hair less gray than they have today. Names that were once so familiar you felt like they were family (what happened to Phil Gramm?) are slipping into the realms of amnesia. The urgency of the threat of weapons of mass destruction — announced by the president and parroted by the Congress — feels odd, too, not just because no WMDs were found but because the very foundations of the war have shifted so many times over the past half-decade.

MEGAN: So, did you hear? The DNC allowed Puerto Rico to switch from having a caucus on June 7th to having a primary on June 1st. This could be the first time candidates actually visit/give a crap about our remaining colonies. I have always been uncomfortable knowing we have colonies whose citizens are less than fully represented in our federal government. It seemslike that's why we had a war with England way back, right?

MOE: Yeah I grew up in DC so I'm kind of used to it.
I put it in the news roundup though.
The news roundup no one read because everyone was too busy watching THE HILLS.

Also the Puerto Ricans get that parade.

MEGAN: OMG, Ali Velshi on CNN likes doing stories about Facebook because then tons of people friend him afterwards.

MEGAN: I'm a little scattered this morning, I can't decide whether I should provide her with the attention by asking if you've seen the new Obama girl video in which she asks Hillary to stop attacking her man or if you've been reading Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's blog. The last entry he patiently explains whhy African-Americans don't trust our government. Also, that picture of Emmett Till always sorta makes me weepy.

MOE: Dude this Obama video is awesome
I stopped watching them.

MEGAN: I thought it was when I saw it last night, but it was 1 am and I'd been drinking. My taste is normally off but I was still kind of amused this morning.

Oh, yeah, I hadn't seen one in a while because it got annoying.

MOE: Right, they took their time on this one though. Also, whoever's voice that is is really good. Like wayyyyy better than Ashley Alexandra Dupre

MEGAN: Actually, it's Leah Kauffman, who is quite cute in her own right and that video I just linked is her asking Ann Coulter to "perfect" her, too, as she's Jewish. She talks about finally growing into her nose. I wish that had happened to me.

MOE: Sorry, I'm actually trying to post the video right now. It's so fun and timely! Um, what else is going on? All I've been hearing about is Sinbad. But here's an embarrassing revelation: I do not know exactly why Sinbad is famous. OR maybe he was never famous, which is why he was in Bosnia in the first place. And also, I was not aware Kareem Abdul Jabbar had a blog. I just feel so BEHIND.

MEGAN: Wait, whoa, like Sinbad, Sinbad?

MOE: Yeah, like, honestly, I always thought of him as that guy from A Different World

MEGAN: Me too!
Also, I'll link that shit.
I think I knew he was a comedian, though. But I feel like those USO shows are always second-string entertainers anyway. Sorry, Sinbad. I'm sure you're still funny. But you were no Dwayne Wayne.

MOE: No I knew he was a comedian, i mean I do not live under a rock, it's just that I ...well do you think Sinbad will plan a comedy tour on this basis?

MEGAN: Dude, this is literally the most I've thought about Sinbad in years. Like, possibly since he was on Hollywood Squares or something. Hopefully his agent is booking him on Larry King or something right now.
Ok, completely off-topic, but I went hunting for the video of that trip on CBS's site, and one of their most popular stories is Top 10 Reasons to Have Sex Tonight. Not one of them is because it's fun or because you want to. Stupid moralists at CBS. It's all like, it burns calories and relieves stress. Well, duh.

MOE: Oh fuck it boosts your immune system too?
And cancer risk, but I think that's the same thing.
Well that settles it.

MEGAN: We should have more sex?
I mean, not us together, but in general.

MOE: I am going to go get really desperate on behalf of my immune system. Tonight. Fuck intimacy issues; fuck celibacy in the name of mental well-being etc. etc. Masturbation is not going to save me from cancer.

MEGAN: Well, but only good sex. Bad sex makes you go, well, masturbation would've been a better call.
Masturbation saves you from really, really bad sex.
Sometimes.

MOE: Sad admission: I've been too lazy to masturbate lately. I'll get all revved up talking to some friend about, you know, the fallacy of a "soft landing" and the future of the dollar and the numerous problems the market can't solve, and I'll be on some sort of roll, and I'll be like, DYING to have sex, but there's no one around, and by the time I get all the way up my stairs I collapse on the couch and watch Jon Stewart. And it's kind of sad that even after watching Jon Stewart I'm not in the mood, but I'm not. I fell asleep on the couch instead. In my coat. I actually slept in my coat. Maybe it's just too cold to masturbate. Another good reason to have sex. Oh god, uhhhh, maybe we should address the troop surge right now? Like how the whole 4,000 deaths thing has put a damper on its "success"?
And by the way, Kareem Abdul Jabbar's blog about Emmitt Till is really sad. I didn't even know about that.
Or maybe I did; I have not had enough coffee. Again with the roommate.

MEGAN: Well, but, like, obviously, Moe, duh, most of those people died before the surge. And they volunteered, so it shouldn't really put a damper on our warmongeriness.

MOE: OH wow, an election in Zimbabwe. I think 900 troops have died post-Surge.

MEGAN: I am drinking my official beverage of hangovers: Crystal Lite.
Coffee will come later.
Well, I mean, there's elections, and then there are "elections" in Zimbabwe under Mugabe.

MOE: Yes. And RealClearPolitics linked to some commentary about what it means in the FT but I'm not a subscriber, although I suppose I ought to be. Shoulda taken the meds I guess. Is it a slow news day? Because this linking Bill Clinton with Joe McCarthy thing is kinda old, and yet it's apparently still a top meme, which I think means we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. Yesterday on CNBC they were talking a lot about the Taiwan elections, whose results were not at all a surprise nor did they have anything approaching the economic ramifications they were suggesting, but I'm thinking it was the same problem. When will we get some fucking news?

MEGAN: About Taiwan? Or in general?
The problem is that Obama's sunning himself in the Virgin Islands right now. It's hard to make big news in a media blackout, i guess.
On Zimbabwe, Mugabe raised the salaries of all the government employees to get them to vote for him but since they're broke and sanctioned, he's just printing the money. Who says no one will learn anything from the Fed bailout of Bear Sterns?

MOE: The big stories in the Post are the fact that the Indiana primary is now what everyone's got his eye on. It could be a fair fight! Okay, and then there's some noise in the Times as to whether Obama is too liberal to be a unifier. I'm gonna have to go with "if McCain is what represents the GOP right now, then yes; next question." And hahahaha re your Mugabe joke but oh, good lord, did you read about this book?

MEGAN: Um, that writer guy's kinda sexy. Also, it's probably not a universal African tribal myth New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani.
Zimbabwe's been a cluster fuck for years and it used to be a nice, relatively stable place until Mugabe thought he'd lose power and decided white Zimbabweans were the devil. Also, I hope his parents are still ok.
Godwin's, I mean. Because it's really not a safe place at all right now and the elections aren't going to help probably.

MOE: Wait! I forgot! We haven't talked about how David Paterson could get soooooooo much money for his memoir at this point OMG WTF his life just keeps getting more interesting.

MEGAN: A middle aged man did drugs in the 70s. The fact that such a thing is news means either there aren't a fuck of a lot of glass houses around or that people really like throwing stones anyway.

MOE: Huh weird, and on a final note, maybe Rev. Wright was right? In the spirit if not the letter of what he says. Some reader just sent this in, with the message, "don't let the haters get you down babe." Aw! The haters are actually what get me up in the morning! Well no, actually, coffee is what gets me up in the morning. AHEM.

MEGAN: Dude, I'll get on Ebay and have you a new grinder in a week.

Editor's Note: My roommate just went to Starbucks to buy me some coffee. She is a wonderful person to whom I am eternally grateful. Also, she took our commuter mugs so as to reduced our carbon footprint etc. I love coffee, and my roommate. And the Earth, we both love it.

MOE: Hahahaha your status message
It's like you're READING MY SOUL.
MEGAN: I might've gotten drunk and listened to depressing music last night....
MOE: What if we spent the entire crappy hour talking about the real tragedy of the universe that is our love lives, lack thereof department
MEGAN: 'Tis the reason for the season, or THE CRAP
MOE: And then everyone who has hurt us would SEE it and KNOW.
MEGAN: If they read, not that they do, because they DON'T CARE ABOUT US
MOE: It is the ultimate tragedy that JENNIFER ANISTON IS TOTALLY READING ANGELINA NEOCON'S COLUMN RIGHT NOW and realizing that yes, tis true, those who take a dark and cynical view of human nature are the ones that get ahead in this world.
MEGAN: And being like, goddamn Brad, marrying a bitch whose mission on earth is apparently to show me up in every way.
It's so hard to choose, would you rather a dude end up with someone prettier and more accomplished or someone uglier and hateful and stupid. Because you're jealous of the first and then like, oh, dude, really? about the second.
Also, this is the song from whence the status message comes. [Warning: I'm a little bit country]
MOE: Ah yes...I think you exposed this to me while drunk.
MEGAN: ahem. I have a pattern.
MOE: Oh my god, and this guy just came online who I, like, kind of somewhat fucked over a few months back. Thank you, karma deities. We had this very amorous one-night stand wherein the amorousness made me uncomfortable and I basically froze him out. I remember seeing the movie Ocean's Thirteen with him. Which is, of course, why I mention it, because it brings the conversation back to BRAD PITT AND ANGELINA JOLIE AND DAVID PETRAEUS AND THE WAR AND THE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE AND THE BALANCE OF POWER AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN HEGEMONY ETC. ETC. ETC.
MEGAN: Which YOU could totally talk to him about because he didn't block your chats and/or signs in occasionally and totally isn't avoiding you or ignoring you or not speaking to you even if you did freeze him out, which is better than, say, letting someone in who says that he has serious feelings for you and then falls off the face of the earth because you having feelings back makes him feel insecure so it's of course, all your fault BUT WHO CARES BECAUSE ONE PERCENT OF THE COUNTRY IS IN A PRISON NOT OF THEIR OWN MAKING.
MOE: Well the interesting part about this guy is that I did this post on this thing Esquire was touting called "radical honesty." And he sent me an email subject headed "Radical Honesty" with like ?????? in the body text.
So I emailed him back and was like "False intimacy creeps me out," which, to be radically honest, was a line I cribbed from Don. Wait, am I actually going to post this IM? It is so Summer of '07 Gawker. But with fewer exclamation points.
MEGAN: Too late to stop now!
MOE: Hey, guess what? There's no time not to. Okay, so ...should we talk about the troop surge?
MEGAN: Well, if you're going to admit your embarrassing Jezebel secrets, let me admit mine. This rap email? It was sent to me. And then I told someone who told someone and it got back to the aforementioned guy who I dated for 4 years and first he wanted to kill the dude and then he asked me why I would sleep with a douchebag like this instead of him and I might've cried a bunch because I was like... that guy hurt me but you broke my heart and then he felt worse and now I think he might not be speaking to me either.
MOE: Good grief. Can we discuss why this month had to have an EXTRA day in it??????
MEGAN: Like things will get better in March? But, actually, I know the reason for that! It's sort of half the Romans' fault and half the Catholic Church's!
Fucking Catholic Church.
Did you know the Pope is coming here?
MOE: Did you know McCain just endorsed some guy who calls the Catholic Church an "apostate church," and "a false cult system" — and also "the Great Whore" but I think that's a compliment. I guess with Angelina Jolie's tacit endorsement he doesn't need the Catholic League anymore.
MEGAN: Ha! Bill Donohue can suck it! Suck it Bill Donohue! Who you gonna vote for now? Hillary?
MOE: She's got Ann Coulter and Bill Cunningham! did you ever dream Hillary would get so many, like, protest votes from Republicans? It's really awesome. And yesterday even Bush warned Obama about Hillary. Did you see that? Again, weird.
MEGAN: I think they're all just fucking with us (oh, wait, right, we were moving on to a different theme). Although, really, I haven't met a real Republican who isn't salivating at the thought of running against Hillary. I don't get it, but there it is.
MOE: Nothing makes sense! It is all inexplicable! Angelina is a neocon. I wonder if Scarlett Johansson will come out and write a counterpoint piece now.
MEGAN: It would be good publicity for that inescapable movie.
MOE: Okay we have to talk about something. Did you get that I am totally worthless today? It is Friday. And it is a Friday that shouldn't have existed but for this idiotic "Leap Year" thing.
MEGAN: No, I'm worthless too
MOE: Look, consumer spending accelerated last month! That's positive news. Keep it pumping!
MEGAN: Yay spending! Also, the cops found ricin in Vegas.
MOE: oh god that's RIGHT. THE POISON. was it terrorism??? Because that would be an amazing target, an Extendedstay suite near the Vegas Airport. Who would have pegged it, you know? Didn't we find ricin a few years back in Japan? Yes right? On a subway? Where's my head at? Oh yes, in another chat window. Busted again!
MEGAN: I'm calling home grown wackos, but I'm usually wrong on these things.
Also, gay pron twins arrested in burglaries! I guess it doesn't pay that well after all!
MOE: Oh look and John McCain must have read Crappy Hour yesterday!
MEGAN: Dammit! Which one of the commenters is a McCain plant! Witch hunt!
MOE: Do you get Renzi mixed up with Rezko too or is that just me???
MEGAN: No, but only because I used to be a lobbyist and I heard of Renzi first, but it's not surprising

• "As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq." From a thoughtful opinion piece written by...Angelina Jolie? Ummmm, does this mean she's joining her estranged dad in support of McCain? (Oh, and in case you were wondering, that's her with Gen. David Petraeus and some other broad earlier this month in Baghdad, where she supposedly did all the "observing" and "interviewing" she talks about in the column. ) [Washington Post]
  
• "Anyone who says they don't enjoy the army is mad - you can spend a week hating it and the next week it could be the best thing in the world and the best job you could ever, ever wish for. It has got so much to offer." That was Prince Harry before he went to Afghanistan, where he apparently saw actual gunplay. We hear it's not rare out there! A three month tour, on the other hand... [Times Of London]
  
• "Britney Spears is basically an analogy for the world." That's Rufus Wainwright. Leave it to the gays to cling to their cynicism.[NY Mag]

• Hey speaking of, one in a hundred Americans is in prison right now. I know, it sounds low. But expensive! Many states now spend as much on corrections as higher education. [Washington Post]
  
• "I believe Sen. Obama better stay focused on his campaign with Senator Clinton, neither of whom has secured their party's nominee yet." Guess who? It's George W. Could you tell from the grammatical error? Or did you see it on CNN. He said it all stern-like, like he was making a threat. But like, what's the threat? Such an intriguing man. [The Swamp]
  
• He also maintains there's no recession. Yeah, I'm with Rufus. [AP.]
  
• I want to have his babies of the day: Jeffrey Fisher, an attorney representing fishermen suing Exxon for that oil spill thing that happened back during the Cold War who still, admirably, has his sense of humor. [Wash Post]