Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!!! Barack Obama and Mike Bloomberg had breakfast this morning! Together! Obama's eggs? Over easy! Bloomberg's? Scrambled! Obama toast? Wheat! Bloomberg's? White! There were also potatoes! The tab was $17.34! Obama paid--and left a $10 tip! They talked about the economy! Education! Homeland security! Global warming! They even "looked thoughtful"! What does it all mean???

Hear that annoying buzz? It's the Manhattan media, which descended on the New York Luncheonette at E. 50th Street this morning to film the hastily arranged Bloomberg-Obama summit taking place inside--and immediately started wagging its cable/talk radio/tabloid/Internet tongue "about the possibilities, the angles, the common interests" (in the words of MSM queen bee Mark Halperin).The actual footage, sadly, revealed nothing. It's hard to hear what people are saying indoors when you're shooting from the sidewalk. Outside. Through a window.

That, of course, hasn't stopped the speculation. Most of it revolves around whether Obama and Bloomberg will "form a ticket"--and whether Bloomberg, a billionaire many times over, could finance the bid out of pocket. This is asinine. Barring the fact that reasonable experts disagree on whether it's even legal-- "There isn't language in the law or reg[ulation]s that says clearly yes or no," FEC spokesman Bob Biersack tells Ben Smith--it's absurdly braindead politics. Self-financing is one thing. If Obama were billionaire like Bloomberg, fine; he's not beholden to anyone. But to pick a billionaire running mate and then take massive sums of his money would make Obama look 1) weak, as if he needs a "sugar daddy" and 2) corrupt, as if he were selling the vice presidency to the highest bidder. Neither charge would be true--but that wouldn't stop Republicans from repeating them ad infinitum.

Today's Bloomberg-Obama breakfast was nothing more than a photo op. Bloomberg wants to play a part in the "national conversation." Obama wants to burnish his indie cred. So instead of meeting behind closed doors at, say, Gracie Mansion, they meet at a diner, sit in a window seat, keep the cameras out of earshot--but still keep the cameras--and let us blowhards do the rest.