MOE: Well you can do that here.
MEGAN: No, because I have a rule that I only tune into the Today show for NKOTB.
MEGAN: Oh, the McClellan interview, they've been replaying that ad infinitum on MSNBC.
MOE: Which I can't watch. I'm practically dead from some ailment with its origin in cigarettes and insomnia
MOE: Anyway we need to have a sincerity summit
MOE: A sincerity evaluation summit.
MEGAN: Ha, I was gonna say!
MEGAN: Also, wtf is up with us having attacks of insomnia at the same time?

MEGAN: I have to say, watching this interview, I'm far more convinced by him today than anything he did in his 3 years as press secretary. And he seems far less bumbling and stupid.
MOE: Yeah, he's convincing but um not slick.
MEGAN: If overly made-up. Oh, make-up artists, you failed him! (Although, I understand it may have been deliberately).
MEGAN: Oh, God, no, not slick at all. I mean, he says he still has a "great deal of affection" for GWB, he's obviously not particularly capable of slickness.

MOE: Oh man and I still haven't seen the most-buzzed video "Lohan's sapphic smooch"
MEGAN: It's on video? Also, why do we care that she's a lesbian or bisexual, if she is?
MOE: We care because SAMANTHA RONSON COULD TURN ANYONE GAY. And um... speaking of... did you see Anderson Cooper last night?

MEGAN: Whoa, I totally did not. Also, sniff, I remain sad that Anderson plays for the other team. Such a loss that one. Wait, is Samantha Ronson what happened to Anderson Cooper? That bitch!
MOE: Dude now I am going to have weird SamRonAnderson sex dreams. Oooh did you catch this passage?

A page later, he recounts what he perceived as a moment of doubt by a president who never expresses any. It occurred in a dimly lit room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a room where an injured Texas veteran was being watched over by his wife and 7-year-old son as Bush arrived.
The vet's head was bandaged and "he was clearly not aware of his surroundings, the brain injury was severe," McClellan recalled. Bush hugged the wife, told the boy his dad was brave and kissed the injured vet's head while whispering 'God bless you' into his ear.
"Then he turned and walked toward the door," McClellan wrote. "Looking straight ahead, he moved his right hand to wipe away a tear. In that moment, I could see the doubt in his eyes and the vivid realization of the irrevocable consequences of his decision."
But, he added, such moments are more than counterbalanced by deceased warriors' families who urge him to make sure the deaths were not in vain.

Uhhhhh, what was that Heller book…that became a cliche…describing situations like this…didn't that involve war?
The other person, or their software, refused the request.
MOE: Dude now I am going to have weird SamRonAnderson sex dreams. Oooh did you catch this passage?

A page later, he recounts what he perceived as a moment of doubt by a president who never expresses any. It occurred in a dimly lit room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a room where an injured Texas veteran was being watched over by his wife and 7-year-old son as Bush arrived.
The vet's head was bandaged and "he was clearly not aware of his surroundings, the brain injury was severe," McClellan recalled. Bush hugged the wife, told the boy his dad was brave and kissed the injured vet's head while whispering 'God bless you' into his ear.

MOE:

"Then he turned and walked toward the door," McClellan wrote. "Looking straight ahead, he moved his right hand to wipe away a tear. In that moment, I could see the doubt in his eyes and the vivid realization of the irrevocable consequences of his decision."
But, he added, such moments are more than counterbalanced by deceased warriors' families who urge him to make sure the deaths were not in vain.

Uhhhhh, what was that Heller book…that became a cliche…describing situations like this…didn't that involve war?

MEGAN: Can someone please ask those fucking families, then, what would be an acceptable outcome to justify the deaths of their children?
MOE: Dude who is ronaldpagan? Reading his comments alone is like reading…a book? A very long New Yorker piece about the shifting views regarding violence within the jihadist movement, but actually finishing it?
MEGAN: I don't know, about either RP's identity of the shifting views on violence in the jihadist movement. But can we please, please talk about the male liberal blogospheric hard on for Jim Webb? Between Attackerman and Ezra Klein, it's starting to get a little uncomfortable all up in here, especially as neither one of them talks to any degree about his shitty record on women's issues, like Kathy G does and nobody but Politico gets into the 3 obvious female choices, none of whom suck and all of whom have great records.
MEGAN: Because, really, Jim Webb? Is going to corral Hillary supporters? What we need on the Obama ticket is a thrice-married former Republican with a shitty history on women's issues just because he's got a military background? That's why McCain's neck and neck with Obama in the polls? Bish plz.
MOE: I preach general ignorance on this one. But it's cool Kathy G named her blog the G Spot. I do think Obama should pick someone with military experience. I have no fucking clue who that is though. Who do you think he should pick?
MEGAN: Well, A. I voted for Jim Webb despite his record on women's rights because I wanted George Allen out of office. I think, however, with Obama already facing charges of sexism he's not going to do well on the trail and the argument that the seat goes back to the Republicans is rather apt.
MOE: And I don't really care about this shit:

Stepping away from all that high-minded rhetoric, I'll add that, in practical terms, selecting Webb would be a slap in the face to the Hillary Clinton supporters. I'm not saying that Obama has to pick Hillary as veep (and indeed, I think that would be a bad idea). I'm not even saying that he needs to pick a woman.

But Hillary was the first woman to ever have a serious shot at the presidency, and she came so close. So the Hillary supporters (of whom, to be clear, I am not one) will feel frustrated enough that their candidate didn't win.

MEGAN: B. Wesley Clarke is an idiot.
MEGAN: Well, I agree with that. Maybe not the "slap in the face" part, but the people that are pissed at NARAL for endorsing Obama ain't gonna be pleased with him picking a guy who said the Naval Academy was a "horny woman's dream" either.
MEGAN: Hell, I won't be.
MOE: On B. we concur. But okay, of course you voted for Webb. George Allen was a tool machine. And egad, when did he say that? I'm just getting my coffee now.
MOE: I just don't want to talk about gender ANY MORE. We know Obama doesn't want his daughters to be punished with babies. ISN'T THAT ENOUGH?????
MEGAN: Egad, he said that in 1979, more than a decade before he defended the dudes who assaulted women at Tailhook. It's all the feminists' fault, you know, that those Great Men's careers were ruined by a little drunken tomfoolery that the women totally took out of context.
MEGAN: Also, keeps divorcing his wives.
MEGAN: I mean, whatever, obviously Virginia wasn't going to elect a Senator that doesn't make me slightly sick to my stomach with his opinions on things, and great that he's spent his term so far appropriately sucking up to the left wing that got him elected (hello, unions!) but, I'm sorry, he is a shitty VP choice. He doesn't bring Virginia, he doesn't bring the South, his presence as the stooge in the short chair doesn't counter McCain on foreign policy and, frankly, this election stopped being (for most people) about the war or foreign policy for the swing voters when the economy went in the tank and their houses got repossessed.
MOE: Just throwing out a link to an uplifting Frontline on Tailhook. Maybe I'll clip it later! So yeah, he is not the guy. I think Obama should choose someone with military experience in spite of what the election is about. The president has immeasurably more influence on a war than he does the economy.
MOE: But perhaps that line of thinking is a little audacious.
MEGAN: I just don't think military experience matters, cough, Bush, cough, Cheney, cough, Clinton, cough, Gore.
MEGAN: It's part of this whole fetishization of our military that we insist on engaging in.

MEGAN: Can somebody, please, show me one of the so-called Reagan Dems that voted for Hillary in Ohio, PA or West Virginia who is saying they'll otherwise vote for McCain (and not the pissed off women) who would be like, oh, hey, he picked a virtually unknown first term Senator from Virginia with some military experience for his VP, so now I'm totally voting Obama?
MOE: Well sure, agreed, but matters for what? Like, I think more than three highly uneventful years in the Navy might have done Rumsfeld some good; well actually, that point is rhetorical because being a HUMAN might also have done Rumsfeld some good. And, yeah, you've got it: the biggest reason Jim Webb is a bad choice is because no one really knows who he is. To depart for a second: here is a piece from the New York Review Of Books on the ideas of Obama's economic adviser confidante types. They are…um…less socialist than I'd like.

MEGAN: Well, at least they're not Keynesian?
MOE: Oh dude my BROWSER just crashed. I thought I was having a heart attack.
MEGAN: Dude, my other computer is totally fucked, I'm going to finish transferring files today and then reformat that bitch.
MOE: Did you check Dan Bartlett using our favorite SFW term for feces?
MEGAN: Wait, you can say "crap" on TV? It's not as good as Jon Stewart getting away with calling Tucker Carlson a dick, but it's pretty good. Yeah, the Administration has its PR efforts together pretty good on Scottie this week, from Dana's saddened "This isn't the Scott we know" to "total crap," they're running the gamut.
MOE: Okay, so what I would really like to know is 1. How did Scott McClellan come to the realization that this was the book he wanted to write 2. Was it an agent? It had to be, right? 3. Who was the ghostwriter? How long did they work together? I thought I might get some of that from this interview with his publisher but uh…not really. We learn that Mike Allen did, in fact, as he specified in his initial story on the subject, bought the book from a bookstore. I'm pretty sure he did the same thing with the Bernstein Hillary book. So Mike Allen has a "source" at Politics & Prose, who cares. How did this thing actually come about? Why don't we know this yet?
MEGAN: Well, I mean, someone on MSNBC had a good theory this morning (obvi not Joe Scarborough). I mean, dude spent 3 years defending the indefensible and looking like a doofus only to get ousted in 2006 as everything started to suck and he (apparently) got to realizing that everyone figured they could lie to him and he's never figure it out.
MEGAN: Does he have a cushy sinecure somewhere? No.
MEGAN: He's still on the lecture circuit, but everyone knows he's a shit public speaker that didn't know anything.
MOE: I hate how everyone's like, "unbelievable." Dude, have you ever lived with someone who just got fired?
MOE: Midlife crises have been known to spawn from less.
MEGAN: Dude, I've been fired. I sucked. I got drunk for the better part of a week, stayed in bed, and the dude I was seeing dumped me because I got fired.
MEGAN: So, I stayed in bed for like another week after that.
MOE: Yeah, now just imagine Nick Denton had spent six years brainwashing you!!!!
MEGAN: To the point where I still held great affection for him!
MEGAN: Then I'd have to turn on Noah.

MOE:MOE: Dude remember Scott Ritter? What's he doing these days? I don't usually buy this whole "You can't change your views after 30" silliness but that guy's epiphany was a little weird.
MEGAN: Apparently, he's a talk show commentator.

MEGAN: HA! He was also arrested in 2001 but never charged for trying to fuck an underaged girl he tried to meet on the Internet.
MEGAN: So, he either spend a lot of time on his computer or virtually none, I'm guessing.

MOE: can you check real quick if any of the other major newspapers (besides the times) had anything bad to say about mcclellan
MEGAN: Howie Kurtz entitled his column "Turncoat Time" and said "We all may have underestimated how he felt about being dumped in a White House shake-up."
MOE: Oh by the way how hilarious is it that Bush pretended not to remember if he'd had cocaine??? DUDE YOU REMEMBER IF YOU HAD COKE THAT IS THE POINT
MEGAN:

The question is inescapable: Now he tells us? McClellan had deep qualms about Bush using propaganda to sell the Iraq war, about being misled on Valerie Plame, about the president being in denial on Hurricane Katrina, and he utters not a peep of public protest until he's ready to sell his book?

MOE: OH like he was really going to miss that job so much
MOE: I'm just saying the Editorials though
MEGAN: Novak's column is, hilariously, about Clinton.
MEGAN: Um, weirdly, neither the WaPo, Boston Globe, LA Times has anything one way or the other thus far.

MEGAN: So, do you want to start with the slideshow of hotness that is Obama's personal aide? I mean, the article's nice, blah blah blah, but really, I think its purpose should just be to allow us to ooh and ahh over the dude.
MOE: Dude the hottest dude today is the Marine on the fucking front page of the Times and I fucking CAN'T FIND IT ONLINE.
MEGAN: This guy?
MOE: It should go with this story…do you see a picture there? Mine's not loading. I may have to scan. To support the troops, you know. Did you get through any of the New Yorker piece I sent on Fadl vs. Zawahiri?
MOE: And yeah, that guy! He just defeated the Taliban or something!
MEGAN: By the way, for the amusement of all, by Gchat banner ad is now this: "Dictionary.com Word of the Day - ribald: characterized by, or given to, vulgar humor."

MEGAN: Well, I think in the grand tradition of good friends, it's a great thing that you and I have very different taste in men. You can have your Marine, and I'll take the aide and we can both be happy!
MEGAN: Though I think we can all agree that any ladyboner can most easily be killed with this, which greeted me on the top of the New Yorker's site when I went to look for that article.
MOE: How was your weekend? I'm trying to think of some ribald conversations that transpired but 1. I don't really know what constitutes "ribald" when I just volunteered my fear that I had genital warts and 2. I actually ended up having a weirdly serious drunk conversation with a friend about God, and how he thought the Left was going to reclaim Jesus, and then I read half this piece about the jihad movement's ongoing internal debate over just how violent they really need to be and…uh…got a sunburn. Through a pair of black jeans.
MOE: It's…um…
MOE: Not Timid, that shot.
MEGAN: Yes. Not Timid is a good way of phrasing it.
MEGAN: Um, my weekend? Pretty relaxing, not much happened, you know, just had this little piece published in a minor news outlet.
MOE: So what's the deal? Do you want to read about Roger Stone while I examine the future of jihad?
MEGAN: I mean, want is probably a strong word since the article starts in a swinger club and one is thus forced to consider the thought of that man fucking, but yes, I'll do it as I think I'll garner more of an understanding out of that than the jihadist piece before coffee.
MOE: In the meantime China's not forcing fines or abortions on anyone who decides to get pregnant after losing kids to the earthquake. (To be fair: China stopped forcing abortions three years ago, I think, but it still happens sometimes?) Bill Clinton said a lot of idiotic things about how there's some vast elitist conspiracy to cover up the fact that Hillary is the inevitable next president and McCain asked Obama to visit Iraq with him, which I think is an excellent idea since he's not exactly safe here, as Hillary so saliently pointed out the other day.
MEGAN: Ok, well, now, my gag reflex has woken me up.

Not long ago, Stone went to the Ink Monkey tattoo shop in Venice Beach and had a portrait of Nixon’s face applied to his back, right below the neck. “Women love it,” Stone said.

Ummm, we're all women, right? Because I think we can all give this a resounding thumbs down.
MEGAN: Also, by the way, the fact that Reps Anna Eshoo and George Miller endorsed Obama really just means that Nancy wants to because obviously they only do what they're told. And while that phrase sort of pisses me off, I also sort of wish that Pelosi was that steely and puppeteery because then she might get more shit done.
MOE: Oh Jesus at this point any Democrat who endorses Obama should just not bother me with their headlines. I'm trying to focus on the brotherhood here. Also dude I have to get that pic of that marine who is totally hot
MEGAN: I'll need it, too, to wash the Roger Stone stench out from under my nostrils.
MEGAN: Things like this quote, from a Democratic strategist:

He once said to me, ‘Are you black? Are you Hispanic? Are you gay?’ When I said no, he said, ‘Then why the fuck are you a Democrat? You should be with us.’

This guy should be denied all access to pussy, seriously. Pussy boycott.

MOE: Um, someone in my house whose name will go unmentioned is eating one of your Christmas cookies.
MOE: That's neither here nor there.
MEGAN: The pumpkin ones, or the nutmeg ones?

MOE: Lawrence Wright describing the changes in Cairo since he taught English there in the seventies reminds…me of China without the economic growth:

When I lived in Cairo, the population was about six million. Now it is three times that size. The unbearable congestion reflects the ungoverned quality of life in the city; pedestrians plunge into the anarchic traffic, their faces masked by fright or resignation. The virtual absence of any attempt to impose order—in the form of street lights or crosswalks—is characteristic of a government that has no sense of obligation to its people and seeks only to protect itself.

One day during my visit, I went to Cairo University, whose buildings are practically crumbling from neglect. There are nearly two hundred thousand students, a good many more than there were when Zawahiri and Fadl studied there. Although the campus was quiet, the mood of the students was troubled, if subdued. Their professors had been on strike because of low pay; in Cairo’s poorer neighborhoods, riots had broken out over the cost of bread, and, in a middle-class area, residents had marched against pollution. The government’s response to the desperation had been to round up eight hundred members of the Muslim Brotherhood and throw them in jail.

MEGAN: Is it a bad thing that I snorted at the last sentence? Because if it is, I don't wanna me good.
MOE: I was going to blockquote another paragpraph but that feels lazy so I'm gonna summarize: Egyptians, like a lot of Middle Easterners, were psyched about 9/11 bc they thought it would force Americans to reexamine their support of their corrupt autocratic regimes and help eke out a middle path that embraced neither the status quo nor Islamism. Sadly that did not happen. Turns out we are not so good with "middle paths." Oh and btw Iran has nukes it's a grave and serious and urgent threat!
MEGAN: Oooh, way to bury the good tidbits! So, Charlie Black who is the Big Bad Lobbyist in McCain's camp, until very recently worked for the firm that Stone helped found, which was bought by the firm that Mark Penn helps run.

“So what that means is that Mark Penn is Charlie Black’s boss,” Stone told me. “And they said I was sleazy.”

MEGAN: Ha, the Egyptians thought that having he crap bombed out of us would make us re-examine our support of corrupt and autocratic regimes? I guess their knowledge of history is at least as bad as most Americans'.

MOE: Holy shit. Okay, so the Lawrence Wright story profiles some of the jihadist movement's foremost dissenters, namely a doctor named Sayman Imam Al-Sharif aka Dr. Fadl who met Ayman al-Zawahiri in med school in 1968 — hey! another awesome thing that happened that year, alert the boomer era hagiographers — but became estranged from him in the nineties and went off to practice medicine in Yemen and last May tried to call the whole thing off in a letter to a newspaper.
MEGAN: Oh, so, he's like an idealist? One Op Ed can stop a jihad or something?


9:45 AM
MEGAN: Pen is mightier than the sword?
MOE: Etc. etc. ... well, I guess he is like the William F. Buckley of Jihad, you know? The intellectual center of the movement apparently. And so he had a lot of followers. One was a guy named Karam Zuhdy. The rift sort of began in the nineties and Zawahiri tried to preempt it by holding a mass shooting in Novemeber 1997 in the ruins of Queen Hatshepsut’s temple and 62 people died. ANYWAY, Zudhy and his pals would minister to prisoners and try to get them to first renounce terrorism, then extremism, etc…gradually try and reform them etc. etc.
MOE: Most poignant passage so far:

Many of these Islamists had fantasized that they would be hailed as heroes by their society; instead, they were isolated and rejected. Now Karam Zuhdy and other imprisoned leaders were asking the radicals to accept that they had been deluded from the beginning. It was an overwhelming spiritual defeat. “We began going from prison to prison,” Ahmed recalled. “Those boys would see their leaders giving them the new conception of the revisions.” Ahmed recalls that many of the prisoners were angry. “They would say, ‘You’ve been deceiving us for eighteen years! Why didn’t you say this before?’ ”

Despite such objections, the imprisoned members of the Islamic Group largely accepted the leaders’ new position. Ahmed says that he was initially skeptical of the prisoners’ apparent repentance, which looked like a ploy for better treatment; however, several of the participants in the discussions had already been sentenced to death and were wearing the red clothing that identifies a prisoner as a condemned man. They had nothing to gain. Ahmed says that one of these prisoners told him, “I’m not offering these revisions for Mubarak! I don’t care about this government. What is important is that I killed people—Copts, innocent persons—and before I meet God I should declare my sins.” Then the man burst into tears.

MEGAN: Wait, so, like, there's Reconciliation in Islam, too?
MEGAN: Also, it's sort of heartwarming that they learned that killing people is bad, though!
MOE: Yeah well if they can get the memo maybe even someone like Doug Feith could reject his old…haha no.

MEGAN: Wait! Wait! Maybe the secret is that you have to go to prison? Because I could be down on running that experiment with good ol' Dougie.

MOE: I got till 10:30 incidentally and scanned that picture and I'm pretty sure not even I expected that 30% of the auto sales in California are made with home equity loans…especially since it would appear that California also holds claim to the market with the highest average price-to-rent ratio, a pretty good barometer of how inflated a real estate market is. A place in East Bay, California costs — or cost past tense, anyway — 51 times its annual rent. 42.5 in San Jose. That is, just for the record, insane.
MEGAN: Yeah, my sister lives out there and in Palo Alto these cute little bungalows that are barely bigger than my condo or your apartment are, like, $1 million and people rent them out and I don't see how you'd have the money to pay that kind of rent and not buy the place.

MEGAN: On the other hand, 18% of Americans believe the sun revolves around the Earth.
MEGAN: Oh, hey, btw, weren't you asked what happened to Aung San Suu Kyi last week? The junta's decided to extend her detention by another year despite laws there that you can't be detained without trial for more than 5 years. Apparently, her being free while they're fucking up the country more is a bad thing.

MOE: I guess we need to start this now. Peggy Noonan

And they were on the right side, connected to the one making the breakthrough, shattering the glass. They were going to be part of breaking it into a million little pieces that could rain down softly during the balloon drop at the historic convention, each of them catching the glow of the lights. Some network reporter was going to say, "They look like pieces of the glass ceiling that has finally been shattered."
I know: Barf. But also: Fine. Politics should be fun.

MOE: This could sorta be an R. Kelly song:

You want to say "Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other's bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it's like that for the boys and for the girls."

MEGAN: My dad's nickname is Butch. Also, wtf is with the overwrought imagery today, Peggy? And why is there a crazy loud motorcycle idling outside my window?

MOE: I'm sure at this point, Peggy Noonan has a programmable robot supplying her with the day's overwrought imagery but that glass ceiling line seems like it might have come old school from her own pen…and I suppose we could talk about Hagee although if it's not newsworthy enough to occupy a minute on the fair and balanced network…
MEGAN: I love, by the way, that calling the Catholic Church the "great whore" and suggesting that Katrina was punishment for not being assholes to gay people was totally acceptable to the campaign, but suggesting that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to Palestine which is needed to bring about the rapture is the thing that gets Hagee the boot. Jews in Florida that don't like Obama? This one's for you.

MOE: One thing I wondered reading fucking Michael Gerson (why did I do that?) this morning is whether the Republicans, when they are skewering Obama's ability to win over these guys:

Tough hill-country men voted for her, men so backward they'd give the lady a chair in the union hall. Tough Catholic men in the outer suburbs voted for her, men so backward they'd call a woman a lady. And all of them so naturally courteous that they'd realize, in offering the chair or addressing the lady, that they might have given offense, and awkwardly joke at themselves to take away the sting. These are great men. And Hillary got her share, more than her share, of their votes.

…ever stop mid-sentence and say to themselves, "Oh yeah…Reagan Democrats…we sure rendered those guys economically extinct!"
'
MEGAN: Oh, wait, and while he's making his point he gets to make an offhand slap at all us snotty little feminists, too, who think that men that give up seats for us are terrible human beings. Actually, Mikey, I wouldn't take the seat because that guy's probably been on his feet all day (and I worked in a factory, so I know how much that sucks even when you're 19) and he's probably as old as my dad and I would think it rude of me to accept even though it would be nice of him to offer. And I'll bet my dad, a union member who occasionally attends Catholic church with my mom and lives in a rural area, voted for Obama.
MOE: Eugene Robinson quotes the Talking Heads today.
MEGAN: Is it sad that I saw that headline and my reptile brain started singing "What a Girl Wants"?
MOE: Oh sorry that quote was from Noonan, who was actually writing about sexism.

Where to begin? One wants to be sympathetic to Mrs. Clinton at this point, if for no other reason than to show one's range. But her last weeks have been, and her next weeks will likely be, one long exercise in summoning further denunciations. It is something new in politics, the How Else Can I Offend You Tour.

MEGAN: Um, ok, well, I take it back about Mikey.
MEGAN: But if she was actually saying that, I'm saying it to Peggy now. Also, the How Else Can I Offend You tour made me snicker a little.

MOE: "If only to show one's range" was pretty good.
MEGAN: So, is that what Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh have been doing? Showing their range?
MEGAN: Oooh, ooh, Parsley's got videos in which he's all spitting angry mad and bringing The Crazy, and they showed them just now on MSNBC, but I'm sure we'll never see them again
MOE: Oooh ooh tell me more about Parsley I'm too lazy to Google.
9:40 AM
MEGAN: He endorsed McCain like ages ago.
MOE: Also dude I think Coulter showed some range with the Hillary thing. Conservatives really do fucking hate McCain. Limbaugh was just being himself. Also a reader wants us to discuss Hillary as VP. Um…what's to discuss: maybe a "dream"…but not a pleasant one
MEGAN: He's totally crazy, and McCain just rejected him and his endorsement.
MEGAN: Oh, for Chrissakes, why would she give up a Senate seat? I get that Bill wants to be the VP's husband or something because he'll be more prominent and he lurves him some Executive Branch (having never served in the legislative one), but that would be stupid, to give up a lifetime Senate seat for VP. Al Gore showed it's no guarantee to the Presidency

MOE: It sounds horrible and bad to live through, like a piano fallen through a roof or something, but then there's also the part of me that perceives the election through some internal amiable-but-reflexively-anti-"Liberal" angry white man Obama Needs To Win and he just hates it on basic "What the shit, a black guy running with a woman now? What are we trying to prove here?" terms. It's illogical, because she's actually just about the most qualified candidate and on some level not picking her to be VP might be sexist, but it's also not why she would be a nightmare running mate.
MEGAN: She would be a nightmare running mate because she wouldn't be a running mate, she'd garner as much if not more media attention. It would be a co-ticket, or certainly perceived that way, and I can't imagine her wanting to be second banana so I can't think that she'd allow herself to play that role (and good for her).
MEGAN: And, by that role, I mean, she wouldn't allow herself to recede into the background even a little bit.
MEGAN: And she shouldn't, and she shouldn't be asked to. She'll be far more powerful in the Senate than she'll ever be as VP.
MOE: Hahaha McCain just promoted Obama to "young man" from his previous status of "boy."
MEGAN: Oh, good, someone finally explained to him that other people get the racist implications of that. Congrats, McCain staffers.

MOE: Well some "old hand" named Jim Johnson is apparently running Obama's veepstakes but you didn't hear that from me:

Democratic officials on Thursday discussed Mr. Johnson’s role on condition of anonymity because Mr. Obama had demanded that the process be kept secret and they did not want him to know they were talking about it. Advisers to Mr. Obama declined to discuss the search or any elements of the process.

Disciplined campaigns are totes boring.
MEGAN: Hahaha, I love how they're like, don't tell him we're talking about him, press!! I wonder if those "Democratic officials" are the same ones that inspired the story about Bill wanting Hillary to get it...

MOE: I meant to bring it back to the Jews again but now I've gotta post this fucking thing:

If Jews do flock to John McCain this fall, Obama would be in some trouble (assuming, of course, that Hillary Clinton doesn't win the nomination through a miracle more impressive than the one commemorated every year at Hanukkah); a strong majority of Jewish voters has gone Democratic in presidential elections since 1924. Jews have favored the Democrat in 21 straight presidential elections, and by an average margin of 3-to-1.

MEGAN: Well, but we've never had a Muslim running before.
MOE: WHAT I WAS GONNA SAY! Ooooh guess what percentage of Florida is Jewish?
MEGAN: Well, since my grandparents moved back to upstate New York, can I say 100?

MOE: Five.

But a Gallup poll last month — in the midst of the Wright drama — found Obama beating McCain 61-32 among Jewish voters, a far wider margin than among the population as a whole. While that's lower than John Kerry's 76 percent margin among Jews (and 5 points lower than the 66 percent Hillary Clinton got in the same poll), Obama's campaign isn't worried about making up the difference by November. "If we're beating McCain 2-1 after 'Obama is a Muslim' scares and a month of Rev. Wright, then we're doing pretty well," one aide said.

MEGAN: So he needs to get 75% of 5% of the population to win the state or something? Jesus Christ, people, this is what happens when nobody votes, stupid shit like this matters.

MOE: DUDE I AM SO HUNGOVER
MOE: You have to help me today i have the brainpower of a computer that came before the Macintosh IIGS. I have the brainpower of an abacus. Ugh, nevermind I have the brainpower of someone who drank away their ability to construct metaphors. I had guests.
MEGAN: Dude, that sucks. I still dehydrated from the last two days of being hungover.

MEGAN: Um, Calderone asked Bob Herbert about Ferraro.
MEGAN: With predictable results.

MEGAN: Um, Jenna Bush-Hager and Henry Hager cut their honeymoon short to attend his b-school graduation, which I've actually been wondering for months why they scheduled their wedding a week before his graduation.
MOE: I think Jenna just doesn't give a fuck
MEGAN: Well, I mean, who among us does really?
MOE: Not Bob Herbert!... I feel somewhat sheepish now for defending him
MOE: But mostly I feel a headache

MEGAN: Hmm, well, Attackerman is all steamed about Hillary comparing the Michigan and Florida shit to Zimbabwe, and I can't say I blame him. Her comparing it to the struggle for civil rights for African-Americans struck me as a bit of inappropriate overreaching.
MOE: Hahaha like that Phyllis Schlafly line from the St. Louis newspaper. "Whatever your thoughts, she's no Robert Mugabe." God I can't believe she actually said this

saying it is wrong when “people go through the motions of an election only to have them discarded and disregarded.”

“We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe," Clinton explained. "Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people,” Clinton told the crowd of senior citizens at a retirement community in south Florida.

MEGAN: She's the MLK of delegate counts and everything. It's sort of annoying, because it's not like she can win anyway.
MOE: Uh here's a story that says some analysts think oil prices are just too high.
MEGAN: Anyway, in a completely awkward segue, Spencer's headline was an R. Kelly lyric, he took great pains to inform me, so it gives me an opportunity to link to a story about the trial and they're actually fucking arguing that the piss might be digital. Dude, R. Kelly's fucking defense team is taking legal advice from Dave Chappelle.
9:20 AM
MEGAN: Wait, you have to be an analyst to think oil prices are maybe too high? Good to know. I looked at a gas station on my way out of NY yesterday and it was over $4/gallon.
MOE: I see your humorous R. Kelly newsflash and raise you a Al Sharpton Dr. Dre blackmail allegation.
MEGAN: I concede to your comic brilliance.
MOE: Oh also I guess the farm bill passed anyway
MOE: I like this graf:

In a statement issued to AllHipHop.com, they say: "The National Action Network and Reverend Al Sharpton were not involved with and did not attend a press conference held by Hip-Hop artists The Game and 50 Cent to announce their truce and donation to charities.

MOE: Hahaha the commenters call him "Al Charlatan"
MEGAN: On the Farm Bill, no, it's totally all fucked up. They passed one, FORGOT to send part of it to the President, so he vetoed a bill that they never passed and they overrode a veto on a bill they never voted for. Somebody would be getting fired if they didn't have an unassailable government job.

MOE: Karl Rove's takedown of Obama'f foreign policy instincts is sorta funny:

I recommend that he read Henry Kissinger's book, "The White House Years." Mr. Obama would learn it took 134 private meetings between U.S. and Chinese diplomats before a breakthrough at a Jan. 20, 1970 meeting in Warsaw. It took 18 months of behind-the-scenes discussions before Mr. Kissinger secretly visited Beijing. And it took seven more months of hard work before Nixon went to China. The result was a new relationship, announced in a communiqué worked out over months of careful diplomacy.

Diplomacy! Now there's a word I haven't heard in…
MOE: There's the link
MEGAN: Well, so, great. Seems like maybe it's time to start those discussions? Or is Karl admitting that the US has been holding secret, high-level discussions with Iran, Syria, Cuba and North Korea the whole time?
MOE: I was wondering what Melissa Block and Robert Siegel were doing at the scene of the earthquake.
MOE: Pursuing our imperial interest I suppose!

at one rescue scene, Block and Hsu had to be escorted away from a mob angered by the presence of American reporters. Both said the reaction probably was a response to Western coverage, particularly on CNN, of China's crackdown on dissidents in Tibet and the troubled Olympic torch relay. Said Siegel, "It's been said that everyone in China can quote Jack Cafferty," a CNN commentator who last month caused a furor in China by calling the country's leaders "goons and thugs."

MEGAN: Ok, but I kind of love Jack Cafferty. How are they more anti-him than anti-Lou Dobbs?
MOE: Maybe for some reason they are unused to people speaking accurately of political leaders? Yeah and on Dobbs I dunno.
MOE: What is happening with Florida and Michigan anyway?
MOE: Ugh Marie Cocco is back.
MEGAN: Oh, nothing right now. The DNC Rules Committee is meeting on the 31st. Clinton wants the whole delegation seated because it will give her 56 delegates more than Obama. The Rules Committee seems likely to give the states some sort of half delegation, which is the minimum punishment under the rules. Michigan's plan that's been presented to the Committee gives some delegates to Obama, so she'd end up with 16 more delegates than him under that scenario.
MOE: But like he WASN'T ON THE BALLOT
MEGAN: Yeah, so Michigan's plan is that they'd come a lot closer to splitting the delegation than the votes prescribe. I'm not totally sure why. Debbie Dingell explained it to me weeks ago on MSNBC.

MEGAN: Anyway, so, Clinton apparently though she had the committee locked up with 13 of the 28 members committed superdelegates to her, but Obama's got 8 and everyone is actually loyal to Howard Dean, so it doesn't seem likely to break her way. I'm calling half delegations.
MOE: Are you still in New York?
MEGAN: Nope, I had to come back for a thing today. I kind wish I could've stayed, but I guess that means I'll just have to go back, preferably when it's not pouring rain and I'm not wearing 5" open toed heels because I have a business meeting and they look good. But they did look really good.

MOE: THIS RAIN WILL NOT END.
MEGAN: Well, it's sunny here
MEGAN: So maybe it will get sunny there later?
MOE: GOD WILLING

MOE: Did you check out Geraldine Ferrarro giving Shep Smith a beej? How could someone be SO HYPER AWARE OF anything even remotely construable as "sexist" still be saying things like "black journalists who are Obama surrogates like Bob Herbert." Because yes, Bob Herbert is so simpleminded, so singlemindedly focused on electing one of "his own" that — oh yes, and the only reason he has his New York Times platform is surely tokenism in the first place — why would a progressive white woman even read him to begin with?
MOE: You know he doesn't have anything worth saying about misogyny

MEGAN: Like Shep wants a beej from a girl...
MOE: Dude
MOE: I'm shaking from anger.
MEGAN: Also she wants an "independent group to do a study on media." Like Media Matters?
MOE: Yeah maybe they should check out that Obama surrogate Bob Herbert who hasn't had anything nice to say about Hillary in the past six months because he's so sexist

MOE: OH EXCEPT WELL THIS FIVE MONTHS AGO

If there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media, it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America

MEGAN: Also, so, can we check her crazy hair? She's got a tuft sticking up in the back. How did that happen?
MOE: Okay, I can't handle it anymore, let's just have a moment of silence for Ted Kennedy's brain. I had dinner with Jennifer Gerson last night and she said that as an intern for MSNBC she was once charged with escorting him up a platform and he was outraged to find that he had to climb steps. "There were literally two steps," she said. My kind of septugenarian! Although…not if I stay in this apartment!!
MEGAN: Well, I think his knees are shit. But, yes, it doesn't surprise me. But brain cancer sucks. I'll bet he thought his heart would get him.
MOE: Okay, in another window SinisterRouge is calming me down. (Imagine if Geraldine Ferrarro was a commenter! She'd get put on notice, and then she'd just go crazy and her last comment would be something like "Hang that darkie from a tree!" and then she'd claim it was a joke and then no one would pay attention to MY brand of "controversy" anymore.)
MEGAN: I love that she's the one calming you down today. I mean, Ferraro just makes me sad. I'm sad that's she's turned into this caricature of a nasty old woman whose racism shows and who is so concerned with her supposed victimhood that she dismisses the claims of others. She was the first female candidate for the vice presidency of the United motherfucking States of America and she's stomping all over the legacy of that. I realize that not everyone reading this would remember, but I remember 1984 and I remember thinking it was, like, totally normal that a woman be running and then realizing it wasn't and thus how cool she was. Only now she's not cool. So I'm more saddened than outraged.

MOE: Uh, in other news Hillary won Kentucky by a 30-point margin. Um, dumb question: are there no black people in Kentucky or something? What's up with that? Also oil went above $130 a barrel, another new record.
MEGAN: I have deliberately avoided looking at gas prices while in New York, a situation helped by the fact that the only times I've passed any have been in a cab and I've been intoxicated. I'm sure they're high.
MOE: A friend of mine asked me the other day why oil prices were so expensive and I was like "1. China 2. India 3. The market tends to overreact 4. no exploration or real incentive for exploration." But I forgot to add "the dollar." And seriously regarding the exploration thing I'm not sure whether that's still true.
MEGAN: Also, Obama barely campaigned in Kentucky. I think despite his crazy fundraising skills, he's conserving his money at this point to get through the convention and Pennsylvania sort of proved that sometimes its just a waste. He doesn't need Kentucky, so he didn't spend so much to make that margin tigihter.
MOE: Kentucky is only like 7.5% black.

Gross reports having students of his at the University of Kentucky tell him they had never seen or talked to a black person before coming to Lexington, a college town of nearly 300,000 people. In some areas of Kentucky, Gross says there's perhaps only one or two black families there.

MOE: Also Kentucky declared neutrality during the Civil War…
MEGAN: I actually met someone once in her forties who had never seen a black person until she left her state. It was, um, interesting. I'm amazed it still happens.
MOE: Though it was a slave state and in the early 1830s slaves comprised a quarter of the population. They just never had much of a plantation economy…Is it possible my perception of Kentucky has been skewed because some huckster from Indiana decided to dress in "stereotypical Southern gentleman type clothing to promote his restaurant chain"?? Um why yes it may be!
MOE: Oh in other news Hezbollah has veto power over everything the Lebanese government does now.
MEGAN: Oh, well, that's great. I love how having the power to scuttle stuff is important.

MEGAN: Kentucky was an okay state. I drove through it once. It was sorta pretty, plus, obviously, bourbon.
MOE: OBVIOUSLY
MOE: So, here's something else. I was on the train yesterday with this lady who was really nice and let me use her phone. Her computer said "Property of the World Bank" and she told me how she was coming up to New York to present a new survey on economic development and by George it would appear she was not pulling a fast one on me! And check this:

But departing from free-market orthodoxy, the panel also said that governments had a far greater role to play in development than was recognized in the markets-are-king 1980s and 1990s. To boost growth, the panel urged developing nations to spend heavily on infrastructure and endorsed, with some reservation, government subsidies to build local industries.

MOE: You don't say!

Among the findings that are bound to stoke the most controversy: democracy isn't essential for growth. Autocratic governments that allow "vigorous debate" internally on economic policies are sufficient, the report said. Free trade isn't a prerequisite either. Some fast-growing economies kept barriers high to imports, even as they promoted exports, the report said.

MEGAN: Oh, wait, someone noticed China! Cool!
MOE: Well yeah and who did China notice? Why…Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia and also Thailand!
MOE: But what I really love is this:

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers praised the commission's focus on government-led growth policies, but said its emphasis on economic winners didn't fully take into account how industrial policies deepened corruption in many countries and failed to ignite growth there. "It's like looking only at those who made fortunes in the stock market without diversifying their portfolios" to figure out the best way to get rich, he said.

MEGAN: Indonesia's kind of a hot mess, though, and has oil/natural gas, so I think that's a little different. But otherwise, I agree with your list.
MOE: Um, actually, looking at the United States economy is what that is like.

MOE: Well yes, Indonesia is an incredible mess, which is why China managed to grab so much manufacturing business from them as Suharto's government crumbled.
MEGAN: Indonesia is one of those places I'd really like to visit. I don't know why. I wish I was like my friend Tim, who parlayed a Masters in theology to a job as an investment banker, saved a shitload of money and bailed on life to travel the world for a year. I am really jealous of him right now, and not just because I keep looking at his flickr account.
MOE: Which speaks to Larry Summers' point, but the fact is that Korea and Taiwan both paid close attention to Japan's climb up the "economic value ladder" into more sophisticated manufacturing. When you manufacture computer chips, for instance, which are by definition very small and shrink in size every 18 months, the cost of sending them down the Insatiable Consumption Esophagus toward the US is not that great. So your population can eventually see much more of the cost! But semiconductor plants are incredibly expensive and sophisticated to operate, so while they're harder to transplant in other countries — though the Taiwanese have certainly been doing just that in China despite the fact that you still can't get a direct flight between the two countries — they also require a lot of PLANNING. INVESTMENT. An educational strategy.
MOE: And then! Much to the chagrin of shareholders…semiconductors are a highly cyclical business! So while the demand keeps growing, sometimes you have to sell them at a loss!
MOE: It can be painfully low-margin…again something the market doesn't reward!
MEGAN: Oh, God, stop, visions of grad school case study horrors dancing in my head!
MOE: BUT. Your countrymen will thank you!
MOE: Sorry, it just completely kills me that you mention how we need better economic and industrial planning in this country to some people and they act like you're fucking advocating the next Great Leap Forward.
MEGAN: I mean, the problem with industrial planning is that you take the concept, throw in 20,000 businsess lobbyists and 535 Members and Senators and you come up with a bullshit plan that won't help anyone that really needs it and will help whomever has the political capital to get help. Ahhh, democracy.

MOE: I gotta get coffee but apparently David Brooks does a 180 on Obama re the farm bill today
MEGAN: cool. i hate the farm bill
MOE: Well speak of the devil! Does David dig the 22-year-olds? Or do you think this young lady was applying for a job?
MEGAN: Do you, can you, apply for a job in white knee high boots? I mean, other than as an actual go-go dancer?
MOE: Kids today totes! She probably wanted to be his research assistant. Or maybe he was just encouraging her not to pursue the wrong way. So should we talk about Iran and Syria and North Korea…just how "serious" are these places anyway?
MOE: We should also maybe talk about oil.
MOE: I'm going to get coffee though I'm off my meds today.
MEGAN: The oil on my face from all the greasy fucking food I ate last night to make up for not eating all day (hello NY Jezzies!) or the black shit in the ground?
MOE: Vito Fossella abandoned his bid for re-election "in a bombshell announcement that brings the curtain down on one of the most storied careers in Staten Island political history," says the Staten Island Advance. They should enlist Method Man to run. I don't even think he has any secret love children.
MEGAN: "Storied career?" Dude, can we talk hyperbole? He wasn't even a Committee chairman. The only thing that's gonna be legendary about his career is how it ended, which is balls deep in his mistress with his illegitimate child in the other room and his wife and other kids sound asleep in New York.
8:35 AM
MOE: Yeah so I have coffee and my Acela ticket now and David Brooks is totally right, the Farm Bill is horseshit, and the only thing I would add to the statement "as the number of small, organized factions in a society grows, the political culture becomes more divisive, the economy becomes more rigid and the nation loses vitality" is that the organized factions don't have to be as small as agriculture. And speaking of which, $307 billion is an astonishing number.
MOE: The question is, I guess, whether McCain get Americans to see in agribusiness the same fatcatism they see in Countrywide Financial and Exxon and Jimmy Cayne.
8:45 AM
MEGAN: Well, I don't have coffee yet but if my nose does not deceive me, my friend whose house I'm at in NY has made me some for when I get done here and that's one of 100 reasons why he's awesome. Also, this farm bill is additionally a huge fuck you to the WTO and the developing countries that stymied progress in the Doha Round in order to achieve progress in terms of reduced subsidies. Fuck you, African nations. Fuck you Bangladesh. Kiss our collective asses, Brazil and Argentina. Enjoy that global food shortage thingie and that poverty thingie because we wanted more market access for our artificially cheap foodstuffs.
MOE: Hey, look, the EU is rethinking its own farm subsidies!Theirs are only $75 billion annually though. What if we proposed to just cut our bill down to Europe's level?
MEGAN: Actually, at the WTO, we wanted them to cut theirs more than we cut ours and vice versa. No, seriously.
MOE: That sounds like something we would do! And here's an unfortunate news analysis to which Drudge is linking that credits the increased use of ethanol to the breaking of our foreign oil addiction.
MEGAN: As though ethanol has to come from corn.
MOE: Total digression but GOP Senator Bob Corker rejected/denounced the Michelle Obama ads.
MEGAN: Same way he did the Harold Ford/white girl ads no doubt.
8:55 AM
MOE: Apparently ethanol consumes a third of the US corn output. Just one reason USDA economists are expecting a 5% increase in food prices this year…ugh, this topic is so obvious and boring though. Ethanol subsidies = BAD IDEA. There is just no good alternative case to be made there! While he tries to figure out how to articulate a plan for The Rest Of The World That Resents Us, just where is the harm in adopting the one position that happens to both be held by the Republican front runner and the world's poor??? I guess it's in alienating his Iowans. I wonder, though, how often something like "unwavering support for agribusiness welfare" came up during those caucuses.
9:05 AM
MOE: Especially when four out of every five Americans want the country to move in a different direction!
MEGAN: Also, like, we could eliminate the ethanol tariff, which is really high and effectively keeps out ethanol imports from places like Brazil, where it is not made from corn.
MEGAN: We could also rejigger the current subsidies to reflect the chemical reality that one can make ethanol from things other than corn, and push investment in that direction rather than encouraging the construction of more corn-based ethanol facilities but, yeah, Obama's got to win Iowa, so...
MOE: Annoyingly, ethanol is nowhere to be mentioned in today's Bob Herbert "Let's Be Serious" column. But thanks for alerting us to this:

The Houston Chronicle did a long takeout on Sunday on the suicide in March 2007 of an Army recruiting sergeant, Nils Aron Andersson — just one day after his marriage to Carry Walton. Sgt. Andersson, 25, had spoken of the many horrors that he had encountered in Iraq and was deeply depressed. He shot himself while sitting in his pickup in a parking garage. Distraught, Ms. Walton bought a 9-millimeter handgun at a sporting goods store the next day and killed herself.

MEGAN: Hooray for a lack of a waiting period in Texas.
MOE: Before I try to summon the will to check out that uplifting story I'd like to draw attention to an obvious but important Page 1 story in the Journal about how the American auto industry's manipulation and systemic inflation of demand via aggressive rebating, employee discounts, predatory lending, large-scale offloading to employee fleets, over the past ten years has finally been deemed unsustainable! The American automakers who embraced waste as a business model for so long are now finally accepting that auto demand might never fall back to where it was…maybe because it was never really "demand" in the first place!
9:20 AM
MEGAN: Wait, but I liked 0% financing. Goddammit. Does it mention that what is also sustainable is negotiating with the UAW to determine production levels years in advance is also probably a bad idea? Because that's not exactly market forces, people.
MOE: Well right but market forces, at least the way we think of them, absolutely DO NOT GOVERN DEMAND in this country. It's one of my pet peeves. There's a very good Harper's reading this month further probing this.
9:25 AM
MEGAN: Well, but what are market forces and what is demand? I mean, they do to a degree, it's just not the absolute that our college professors and some on the ideological right think it is (or know it's not but try to tell us it is).
MOE: Right and the problem with the ideological left is that they just don't engage with the issue enough.
MEGAN: I think because it's too complex to really explain to people. I mean, hell, I TA'd economics in grad school for other grad students and getting them to understand microeconomics was like pulling teeth sometimes and they were all smart people. It was like this insane mental block for some of them to the point I truly wondered if I was, like, speaking German and not noticing or something.
9:30 AM
MOE: Well I don't even understand microeconomics. I think it's fucking stupid. Macro is where it's at.
MOE: hahah I being, of course, an authority on such matters.
MOE: I got a C
MEGAN: Micro is like a really simple way to start understanding how the stock market works at a very basic level. I assume you work up from there but I didn't because I wanted to get a real job. HAHAHAHA.
MOE: Hey here's Jonathan Chait saying we should ignore everything John McCain and Barack Obama say about foreign policy, which I'm sort of down for.
MOE: Did you happen to catch George Will on Sunday btw?
9:35 AM
MEGAN: I mean, why don't we just all accept that every policy proposal ever made by a candidate is prefaced by "In a perfect world, where I and I alone got to decide, we would do this...." and ends with "But it's not a perfect world, so what eventually happens will look nothing at all like this but it won't be my fault but vote for me because I had a good idea."
MOE: (Oh and speaking of economics not being a real job Floyd Norris slyly agrees with you:

According to the C.P.I. numbers, gasoline prices in April were 13.7 percent higher than the were in December. Or at least they were before the seasonal adjustments were factored in. With seasonal adjustments — the numbers that are prominently reported — gasoline prices were down 1.6 percent.
I have not troubled to try to figure out how this could be, but Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG, gathered data and constructed spreadsheets. He figures that the May number, seasonally adjusted, will be up 5 percent for the month. Presumably, those sounding comforting words about inflation now will have less to say then.
Only a Ph.D. in economics would think he needed to spend a couple of hours to prove that gasoline prices are not declining these days.

MEGAN: Dude, we get to "seasonally adjust" what things cost?
MOE: Well certain things always cost more in certain seasons and certain months are more consumptive than others so…I can hazard a guess as to why this was but the point was just that data ≠ reality in a lot of areas in economics, which is scary
MEGAN: Yeah, like everything other kind of reality, economics is just a subjective reality. Shadows on the wall, etc.
MOE: lol you ALWAYS FALL BACK ON THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHY
MOE: I'm on to you lady
MOE: You probably have a secret Nietzsche sig file of your own
MEGAN: Yes, but it's in the original m'fucking German.
9:45 AM
MEGAN: Because that's how I roll. Quoting dead white German guys. I'm sofa king cool.
MOE: I am bringing this back to George Will and baseball btw.

In America, however, nothing ages as fast as novelty, and efforts to encourage Clinton to pack it in are heartening evidence that the novelty has worn off: The female candidate is like all other candidates. This is what equality looks like — life as an equal-opportunity dispenser of disappointments.

MEGAN: I love how George Will's theories on life are so similar to my own. He just forgot to add "never-ending" there at the end.
MOE:

When, in 1975, Frank Robinson became major league baseball's first African American manager, with the Cleveland Indians, that was an important milestone. But an even more important one came two years later, when the Indians fired him. That was real equality: Losing one's job is part of the job description of major league managers, because sacking the manager is one of the few changes a floundering team can make immediately. So, in a sense, Robinson had not really arrived until he was told to leave. Then he was just like hundreds of managers before him.

MEGAN: Well, unless you get fired for Working While Black. Then it is actually not equality.
MOE: What I love is that it seems that Hillary's own staff would agree. Sexism: why, they don't blame it for sinking her campaign either! Indeed, because they are too busy blaming one another. But Geraldine Ferrarro's reality is different..
MEGAN: Geraldine Ferraro should be president of the society of women who are so damn angry that their candidate didn't win that they'll fuck over the rest of us out of spite.
MEGAN: Also, ahem, it seems like they're trying to blackmail the superdelegates and the remaining states and shit, which is not a good tactic.
MOE: Well that society shares a reality of its own. It's just not mine. Or George Will's. And any society that claims us and George Will as a member is not a particularly exclusive one
MEGAN: I mean, I'm happy to create my own reality, I just realize that I have to function in the collectively shared reality.
10:05 AM
MOE: And I'm out with this, because I didn't want it to go unnoticed:

Is Lebanon viable anymore?" he asked. "Is Lebanon really viable?"
"Frankly, 40 years of my life have been wasted. Fifteen years of civil war, 15 years of Syrian domination and now we've come to something worse," he said, growing angry. "I've lost 40 years of my life in this stupid country. It really is a stupid country. I have nothing good to say about it anymore. I'm disgusted by what's taken place."
He dragged on his cigar, as he sat in his stately villa in Zqaq al-Blatt, enveloped by a scourge of concrete cluttering the neighborhood. Light reflected faintly from stained-glass windows of red and blue, resting under graceful Levantine arches.
"I wish I was born in Syria. Or that I was born in Egypt. Can you imagine living in a country that has gone through 30 years of this? What kind of country is this?"
He shook his head, his anger giving way to dejection.
"There's something wrong here," he said, "something wrong."

cMOE: Dude I don't want to forget this so I'm just showing you now. From Dick Morris's column on how McCain can beat Obama:

If the GOP nominee were Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, independents and Democrats might not vote Republican even if they became convinced that Obama is some kind of sleeper agent sent to charm and conquer our democracy.

MOE: um no kidding!
MEGAN: Why doesn't Dick Morris go back to sucking prostitutes' toes and leave the rest of us alone. Have you seen his teeth? He ain't stopped sucking stanky feet yet.

MOE: So there is too much to write about today but anyway Iran is still building a nuclear program, treaties be damned and we can't do anything about it, Burma is still letting its people die and Asian governments won't do anything about it, Hugo Chavez is supporting FARC and by any standard probably now qualifies for our state sponsors of terror list but we probably shouldn't give him the satisfaction, and now they're saying it's the end of American Superpower. For realz?!
MEGAN: Wait, wait! The NY Times is reporting this morning that Myanmar/Burma is going to let ASEAN help. I'm skeptical but maybe they actually will?

MOE: Ah, so their "soft approach" did work!

In a clear departure from the usually secretive style of the military junta, state television in Myanmar on Sunday showed video of the leader, Senior General Than Shwe, touring a refugee camp, checking supplies, patting the heads of babies and shaking hands with survivors. Some of the cyclone victims, surrounded by neat rows of blue tents, clasped their hands and bowed as the general and other senior military officials walked by.

MOE:

"Are we going to continue to cover the earthquake?" the Guangzhou-based reporter asked in an instant message to his editor, a day after China's deadliest earthquake in three decades struck Sichuan province."Of course," replied the editor, surnamed Yang. "Why not?"
Then, the reporter said, he forwarded to his boss the text of the latest edict from the propaganda department of the Communist Party Central Committee, ordering domestic news media not to send any more journalists to Sichuan.
Yang wrote back, "If everyone pays no attention to this, then it won't really be a ban."

MEGAN: Oh, she's probably still under house arrest. Like the regime wants to allow her ot be showed doing good work?
MOE: 40 years of mind control, propaganda, a string of incomprehensible, and incomprehensibly destructive political campaigns combined with severe rationing and poverty followed by 15 years of steady marginal increases in living standards and the appearance of openness will...do that to a citizenry!

MOE: I guess we should talk about how the crowd that showed up for Obama was like 1/8 the population of Portland? And maybe we should talk about how tiny his advance for Dreams From My Father was?
MOE: Oh and how a place as shit poor as Yemen manages to hide a guy with a $5 million price on his head. And also we should talk about oil prices. And McCain's continued purge of his aides who love lobbyists, which is getting like New York politicos with whores. And Anthony Shahid's fucking depressing story on Lebanon.

MEGAN: Ok, well, I can speak to the continued purge of lobbyists. Because there's one guy who isn't getting out. He's McCain's Mark Penn only potentially slightly less stupid. He's practically consolidating power in the campaign by getting rid of the other guys with lobbying ties, so that in November-January when clients are looking for someone with a good relationship to McCain that hasn't been accused of fucking him, he's the only one left. It's all very wonderfully Machiavellian.

MEGAN: Also, I think it's fair to say that Republican lobbyists understand the least about why people think they're shills out to destroy America and don't love McCain that much anyway, so it probably never occurred to anyone that it might be a teeny tiny problem to the electorate that the guy writing McCain's energy policy was an active lobbyist for energy companies. Because, hey, that's how this Administration has run things for 8 years anyway.
9:15 AM
MEGAN: As for the Yemen thing, it's actually a little funny because here, more and more people are tipping off their neighbors to pay their electric bills and shit and the economy goes into the toilet. So either the Yemenis are more loyal, or we're just that more desperate? Either way, my position has always been that I would totally turn in criminals for money, which is probably why my friends are all nerdy-upstanding types. One year at college there was a $1200 reward for a serial fire alarm puller and I was dying to know who it was because that was like, half of the money I'd make all semester otherwise.

MOE: Which reminds me of a point that I hope that Obama can make fairly. Re the "eight more years" thing. I think anyone who goes out of his way to say that a McCain administration would be "another eight years of the same" is doing a disservice to history. I think it's safe to say it would be historically impossible for another Administration to match this administration's singleminded dedication to the pursuit the interests of such a tiny group of corrupt people in all blatant disregard of democracy. I think we would be ill-advised to cheapen George W. Bush's "Worst President Ever" stain that way. No matter what happens in the general election January 20 will be a relatively good day for this country.
MOE: And regarding Yemen, I think it's safe to say we are less desperate.

MOE: And don't let me forget to bring up this fucking depressing story on the end of the era of cooperation between First and Third World countries that SOMEHOW begat the Green Revolution on the basis of a basic shared interest in the end of human suffering and not ADM profit margins.
MEGAN: Um, I don't thing McCain will be bad in the same way, but I think he's spent the last 8 years selling his soul to the Rovian devils in order to secure the nomination, and that doesn't make me particularly happy. There won't be a ton of turnover in terms of the kinds of people in middle management and shit because they're all working on his campaign and will be "owed"
MOE: This is pretty stark.

Adjusted for inflation, the World Bank cut its agricultural lending to $2 billion in 2004 from $7.7 billion in 1980.

MOE: Well, but what does McCain need with the Rovian devils now? Karl Rove is dispensing him free advice via his various punditry positions now.
MOE: There is just something that chills me about the "eight more years" refrain.

MEGAN: Well, and let's not forget that part of the problem with the IRRI's budget and people not working there is the fact that they were a proponent of biotechnology to get certain properties out of rice (salinity resistance, vitamins) that simply could not be bred in by convention means, and they were shit on by the world and the environmental movement, targeted for eco-terrorism and a lot of their developed-world money dried up over it, even though the Gold Rice project could've had serious benefits for the malnourished people of the world. I kept waiting for the article to mention that and it didn't.
MOE: Fuckin ecoterrorists. Anyway here we see shades of the pharmaceutical industry.

The insect is not a new problem. In the 1960s, the rice institute, nestled between jungle and the bustling town of Los Ba os, pioneered ways to help farmers grow two and even three crops a season, instead of one.

MOE: You talk to guys who develop drugs at pharmaceutical companies and they think it's absolutely shameful that if they want a drug to come to market these days they have to go to work on the next generation of lipitor or abilify or the drug that finally cures metabolic syndrome when there are still so many infectious diseases to be cured. At one point there was a Nature article suggesting the industry establish a non-profit pharmaceutical company to address diseases whose cures would not be money makers. The same should go for agriculture, you'd think. I don't really understand why all the philanthropy targeted at making life-improving technology more available to the third world seems to focus on hand-cranked laptops and stuff like that.

MEGAN: I think it's because a lot of philanthropy is corporate, it's designed to make companies look good to their consumers and stock holders, but those decisions are made by people within the company. So, of course that's the kind of corporate philanthropy they would engage in. And the pharmaceutical companies will pay tons of money to run those Prescription Partnership for America commercials and send out the buses and take a hit on giving medicines to a small subset of people who can't afford it rather than risk price controls, and they'll give away some AIDS medications in developing countries to keep patent rights.
9:35 AM
MEGAN: And Monsanto will spend millions of dollars spraying RoundUp on farmers fields to see if they're cheating on licensing rather than donating to the IRRI or developing drought-resistant wheat or something.
MEGAN: And everyone will give Bill Gates $1 million to research a cure for malaria or AIDS or whatever and claim that they're doing great shit and then go back to making money.
MEGAN: Anyway, if we're going to take today to be depressed about injustice, how about if you're taking medical marijuana while waiting for a transplant, you're pretty much not eligible for the transplant anymore?
MOE: Well I actually have a better answer to my own question that is not QUITE as cynical. The culture of Silicon Valley and the rapidness of the wealth creation that's happened there, the "open source-ness" of ideals, the existence of Microsoft monopolistic practices as a sort of anti-standard...the newness...the fact that the scientists in the case of the technology industry WERE the business founders and ARE the wealth holders...this swirl of factors makes electrical engineers and software engineers more idealistic and philanthropic I think. Whereas in pharmaceuticals and agriculture a lot of the scientific talent is still being managed by corporate shareholder-driven assholes because the barriers to entry are so much higher.
MEGAN: So, geeks think computers really can save the world, and everyone else is just faking it like I said? I'd buy that in moderation.
MOE: The thing is that: there are certain classes of people you might to run their businesses more ethically, less greedily...more thoughtfully...Hasidic-founded Kosher agriprocessing plants are no longer among them. (Did you read this story?) (Holy shit.)

MEGAN: I would be more surprised and outraged that this Administration is targeting illegal immigrants for arrest and deportation and doing virtually nothing to the management that hires them if I hadn't been living in this country for 30 years, probably.
MEGAN: And/or hadn't read that series in the WaPo last week about how unethically and illegally we treat supposedly-illegal immigrants while in custody.
MOE: And on that note I'll leave you with this from George Packer's New Yorker piece on conservatism:

MOE:

Nixon was coldly mixing and pouring volatile passions. Although he was careful to renounce the extreme fringe of Birchites and racists, his means to power eventually became the end. Buchanan gave me a copy of a seven-page confidential memorandum—"A little raw for today," he warned—that he had written for Nixon in 1971, under the heading "Dividing the Democrats." Drawn up with an acute understanding of the fragilities and fault lines in "the Old Roosevelt Coalition," it recommended that the White House "exacerbate the ideological division" between the Old and New Left by praising Democrats who supported any of Nixon's policies; highlight "the elitism and quasi-anti-Americanism of the National Democratic Party"; nominate for the Supreme Court a Southern strict constructionist who would divide Democrats regionally; use abortion and parochial-school aid to deepen the split between Catholics and social liberals; elicit white working-class support with tax relief and denunciations of welfare.

Finally, the memo recommended exploiting racial tensions among Democrats. "Bumper stickers calling for black Presidential and especially Vice-Presidential candidates should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country," Buchanan wrote. "We should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two, at least at the Democratic National Convention." Such gambits, he added, could "cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half."

Like Barry, Mara has dabbled in youthful radicalism. Here, her "the only Bush I trust is my own" pose.

In recent years she has been accused of being too refined, elitist.

But that belies her red-blooded agrarian roots!

And it's a little too, uh, "raw" for us but here she displays her willingness to bend over backwards (or anyway, bend over) to serve the people! (What are those people doing there anyway?

Former Topless Model Joins Berlusconi's Cabinet As Equalities Minister [Daily Mail]
Berlusconi's Pin-Up Ministerin [Stern]
Related: Italiy Embraces Silvio, Again And Again [Economist]

MOE: I'll be back in 10. If you have any ideas about what the fuck we should talk about (besides IT'S FRIDAY) I would be stoked
MEGAN: This?
MOE: I actually did read that. It reminded me of BangieB.
8:30 AM
MEGAN: Oh. My. God. Apparently, the New Kids on the Block are performing live at Rockefeller Center today?
MEGAN: Right the fuck now!
8:40 AM
MEGAN: This may be the first time I've ever seen this many women our age in one place since I went to see the anniversary of Dirty Dancing. Also, there's no "background" track and they, um, kind of suck and are playing a medley. No, I take it back, Joey's pretty good. The background dancers outfits were pretty inexplicable except that they looked like they were from when NKOTB was popular. [This mini recap provided possibly solely for the benefit of my childhood friend Caroline]
MEGAN: Wow, Marky Mark is the much more talented brother.
MOE: Um understatement sorta? Although did you ever see that VH1 special where Donny was talking about how he thought he was Liberace? It was kind of priceless.
MEGAN: No, but now I totally want to. Also, that was 2.5 minutes of my life I will never get back.
MEGAN: Ok, so, other serious stuff? The people that owe the copyright to Curious George are going to due over those monkey T-shirts.
MOE: To due?
MOE: haha
MOE: Kidding!
MOE: Sorry I'm still trying to locate my keys.
MEGAN:

"We find it offensive and obviously utterly out of keeping with the value Curious George represents," said spokesman Rick Blake. "We're monitoring the situation and weighing our options with respect to legal action."