The Paris Hilton spoof of John McCain's "Celebrity" anti-Obama video is not sans amusement but doesn't go far enough: it doesn't seem to include the prime laff potential for McCain's own person and family with their "celebrity" tendencies.

    For example, you could have

A. Footage of McCain offering up his wife as a sacrifice to the gods of toplessness...what are the McCains, a bunch of CELEBRITIES?
    Having the words "FAMILY VALUES" in some bright color flash across the screen during this sequence might be neat.

    (more Cainebrity below)

(Cross-posted from Obamaism.org, though the short version here doesn't have the link to another blogger's crazed and color-coded look at O and the Olympics, so you can look over there)

    Not necessarily, those obtuse oddities; but one is concerned. See, e.g., this post by Bil (who took the extra "l" from his name?) Browning, Obama Will Name Bayh his VP Choice on Wednesday,

    I'm going to put my neck out on the line by making a prediction. Barack Obama will announce his vice-presidential choice Wednesday morning.
    It will be Indiana Senator Evan Bayh. ...
    ...The Olympics start on Friday and run until the Democratic convention starts. He won't want to compete with the Olympics for press coverage. He'll announce before the Olympics starts. If he announces on Wednesday morning, he'll get coverage all day and be on the news cycle until the Opening Ceremonies knock him off the top spot. ...

    (comment below)

(Cross-posted in part from Obamaism.org--although the restrictions on excerpting articles here mean that the version at O.o is longer and more complete, so remember to go look at it)

    Just what Obama believes, or may come to believe, could fill many volumes; but as a start, let's discuss one recent look from the Washington Post's Dan Balz; and, at that, one which uses the term "Obama[-]ism". My fellow DB (besides Darcy Burner, cf. our post of yesterday) opines in his 7/10/08 Obama's Ideology Proving Difficult to Pinpoint: Democrats Decry a Move Toward Middle, but Republicans Still See a Liberal,

    (look out below)

(Cross-posted from Obamaism.org)

        As foreshadowed in our previous post: it was a pleasure to interview Democratic congressional candidate Darcy Burner at Netroots Nation, but before I relate more about that.....I thought it would be interesting to ask Charlie Brown, who was also at NN08, which Peanuts character Barack Obama most resembled (cf. the cartoon which is also at our previous post): a harmless and amusing question.
        However, Mr. Brown made himself hilariously unavailable, with various "reasons", over the several days I told him I was interested in a brief one-minute interview. Among other things, I heard from Brown's campaign staff, after he walked away from me, that he was in a tight race and they had to be careful about message control, or words in that direction. (Should I have gotten a crewcut before talking to him? ...Or was he worried I'd pull the football away like Lucy did?)
   
    (more fun below)

    Shall note I am "launching" (like a rocket, you hope it doesn't explode) today my new blog Obamaism.org, which is about what the blog title denotes (plus anything else I feel like opining).
    I have various people lined up as guest commenters/interviewees at Obamaism.org already, including

    --a brainy AND artistic Southwestern state legislator;

    --a professor of sociology and African-American studies at a well-known East Coast school;

    --a proprietor of a supremely snarkily-named blog;

    --etc. (I guess everyone is interested in Barack Obama)

    Enjoy!


    You'll see some humorous content in my first post at "O.o", including some parody of Peanuts (not Jimmy Carter) vis-a-vis politics. But there will be more serious comment later, so feel free to check back frequently. Until your refresh button wears out.
    Guest posters welcome; that means you.

    Here's the link again: http://obamaism.org.

    (much more below)

    Some will have a fit for my even saying "McKaine" instead of "Tim Kaine", but the ugly fact is that "irrational" things like wordplay, mockery, etc. often have a bigger impact than rational things. I can just smell McCain spurting "The change candidate? Then howcum Obama chose someone with my name? --or, HALF my name! Haw haw!", or, "...Kaine? I'm the REAL McCain! And I served in the military unlike that other guy who just sounds like me..."

    As for more ""substantial""" stuff:

A. Well, the military thing is substantial. Despite Webb having the staffer with the gun accident recently, etc., maybe Obama should try talking to him again after all. Or anyone who's served. (Except for Air Force vet Daschle; see this DKos remark about D's problems...)
    If you don't think having worn a uniform for our country is important, try October when Netanyahu (Olmert's replacement?) blows up Iran and people go into panic mode and look for traditional alpha males...including certified war heroes like McC.

    (more)

    CNN says in Bush approves execution of Army private that

    President Bush has approved the Army's request to execute a soldier convicted of rape and murder, the White House announced Monday evening.
    Pvt. Ronald Gray has been on the military's death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since 1988. His execution would be the first for the U.S. military since 1961, but the White House said it expects further appeals before the sentence is carried out. ...
    Gray was convicted of raping and killing a female Army private and a civilian near his post at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He was also convicted of the rape and attempted murder of another fellow soldier in her barracks at Fort Bragg. ...

    Gray seems like a loathsome human being, but I seem to remember reading about plenty of killings committed by U.S. soldiers, some being Iraq veterans. Why Gray, who seems to be an African American (from the CNN photo)? And why now?

    Could it be because of the election, and Barack Obama?

    (more below)

    While I enjoyed NN08 immensely (except for the cold brunch, the lack of plug outlets in the big hall, a candidate who repeatedly ducked a brief interview with me--although a more famous candidate did an interview with me!!--, and other minutiae), I did wonder about the explosion of New Age spirituality in the exhibitors' area.

    "Share International USA" had a booth featuring their teachings/propaganda about "Maitreya the World Teacher", complete with photo!! how convenient!! (see here on Share Int'l site for the same pic of Maitreya. Ain't it great they got a photo of the Holy One?)

    Did Arianna Huffington have anything to do with this?? Ouch.

    (below the fold, it gets WAY worse)

    Sam Stein, in the Huffington Post (a publication I respect less and less for its tawdry "TMZ"-type infotainment, but that's another story...), revealingly notes in his article Webb: I Couldn't Speak Openly If I Were V.P. that Jim Webb, everyone's favorite killer senator from the Old Dominion, doesn't want to be considered as Barack Obama's Vice-President because...

    he doesn't like power?

    he doesn't like "Vice"?

    he's afraid he'll morph into Richard Bruce Cheney?

    --No, it's because, the article says,

...In essence, he was concerned about his ability to speak openly. ...

    But can something be done about this?

    (more)

    After yesterday's Netroots Nation 2008 session with the Speaker of the U.S. House, I went up and shook Nancy Pelosi's hand and asked her directly whether impeachment and censure are still off the table. She answered that no, censure is not off the table (or even "definitely" not off the table, maybe); and as for impeachment, she again stepped aside from the question, as she did during her answers on the stage, by saying that (inherent) contempt was up to John Conyers. (Earth to Nancy: "contempt" and "impeachment" are separate issues...)

    So, while NP offered No Palaver about impeachment, the silver lining is that, as per my (non-used) question from askthespeaker.org, censure is still possible.

    (more)

    Homeboy may be launching a blog about our friend Barack Obama soon: keep watch.

    --But in more real-time news, see above and below fold for a few fab fotos:

    "My tricorder is going wild, Captain!"

    (more madness)

    Having gotten various hungry responders already to prev diary Let's stake a steakhouse in Austin; who's coming?, I've actually called to arrange an extra table, so am looking for more cowpersons (-boys, -girls) to help eat the cow. (Or the giant portabello mushroom steak they have, for veg people)

    For those who ain't read the prev diary, this all be about dining at Austin Land and Cattle Company, c. 7 p.m. on 7/16/08.

    We'll likely meet in the hotel lobby and/or Netroots Nation registration area, but mail me at dbo AT arblogger.com to get my phone number and/or leave yours, etc.

   --Entrees go down to $12, so don't worry too much about $. Then again, feel free to order the 28-ounce porterhouse, get a heart attack, and drop dead, if you like. Your call. Long live la liberty.

    Hope to see you there! Bring your appetite (and a wallet)!

    This wasn't the old Kos.

    In a dingy Austin hotel, eating delicious hot tortilla soup, the blogger stroked his Taxi Driver-style mohawk and screamed, "Ow! I pricked myself!" Wiping off the blood on his Sid Vicious t-shirt, he then reflected on what mission drove him here...

   It all started with the the shock, awe, and torrents of tears at YearlyKos 2007 when Gina Cooper announced that YK would now be known as NN, i.e., "NETROOTS NATION". How people wept! Their Internet god was being dissed!
    After that day, Kos wondered to himself as he stubbed out cigarette butts in his palm, "Are they gonna call it 'YearlyGina' the next year? ...Maybe they'll call it 'Kosapalooza' sometime if I'm really nice?"

    Then it got worse. He received a mail--snail mail--saying the "NN" organizing committee decided to really show him who's boss by burning his childhood sled. The sled with the Internet connection years before its time.

    The K crumpled the sheet of dead tree and screamed, "Oh hell, I'll just kill everybody. That'll show 'em!!"

    (mo mayhem)

    While I enjoyed going to this veggie-o thing in Chicago last year at YearlyKos 2, the night before the event,

, I recall the wonderful words of Deuteronomy 3:7, "But all the cattle, and the spoil of the cities, we took for a prey to ourselves."
    Or, "Where's the beef?"          

    So, one could eat various places at Netroots Nation on Wednesday nite, but I was thinking for now the Austin Land and Cattle Company; it's not the closest steakhole to the Austin Hilton, but it's only c. 1 1/2 miles away, and isn't a chain, and has the pride to use "Austin" in its name, and has a steak cooking setting called "black and blue" (charred outside, cold inside). Wow! Online reviews of ALaCC seem good too. So I made a reservation for 8 there, at 7 p.m. on 7/16/08 (all changeable).
    Who's coming? (I have one anonymous interested other Kossack party already, so the steam is building...)

   (more beef below)

    People pooh-pooh the need for a military person on the ticket, e.g., "Kerry lost", etc. --But if Kerry hadn't been a war hero, he might have done worse. (He won a lot of states, remember...) So what unconventional, not-just-some-average-Dem-politician, and militarily experienced choices could Obama make for VP?

    Anthony Zinni, Marine 4-star general, has been floated, cf. newsvine.com, Obama VP? Gen Anthony Zinni - Foreign Policy and Military Guru.

    Chuck Hagel, you know a little better. ...There is the issue of that Political Party he belongs to, but he has an independent streak and perhaps if he re-registers as an independent or something else...we'll see.

    So vote!! Thanks. It may send a message...

    No, not that one: see today's Guardian, In praise of ... Rathaus Schöneberg,

    ...The Democratic presidential candidate proposes to make a keynote speech during his visit there and has been negotiating to do so against the backdrop of the Brandenburg Gate.... The problem, though, is whether at this stage in the US political cycle the Gate is a backdrop too far for US-German relations. Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose Christian Democrats have traditional ties with the US Republicans, thinks so. ...But there is surely a ready compromise to hand. Rathaus Schöneberg - the town hall for the Tempelhof-Schöneberg part of the city - used to act as West Berlin's city hall during the cold war era. As such it was the place from which John Kennedy delivered his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in 1961. No building in Berlin has more potent associations with the United States and with great American oratory. It would be an ideal alternative venue for Mr Obama's own much-anticipated speech.

    Rat-a-tat-tat!!

    (more rations below)

    This is not about some of my own earlier diaries on "Get Barack to Austin"--in which polls came out pretty strong for having him come to Netroots Nation--, so much as the recently Recommended diary from the Obama campaign.
    The author is pretty gung-ho on "Our campaign is coming to NN to teach you how you can be useful to us." Whoop.
    There's nothing on where Barack Obama is going to be that weekend. (If he's going to be traveling abroad, as Adam B mentions, shouldn't the diarist himself have, uh....said something about that? Whoops!!)
    And if Barack is in Iraq or wherever, what about Michelle? Is she available? ...And if both of them are abroad that weekend, how about some brief live video appearance from where they are? We have "electronics" and stuff nowadays which allow that, I hear.
    If anyone on the Obama campaign cares about how Obama can personally participate in NN--but again, the diary is a list of how we can be trained to be of use to them. Whoop.

    I'm going to tell you a secret. I'm not so interested in what Americans can do for Obama, as in for what he can do for us.

    (more)

    I'm not trying to freak out, but see HuffP, Jim Webb: "Under No Circumstances" Will I Consider V.P. Role.
    This is extremely serious.

    If you don't think Barack can lose in November, he very much can. Sebelius is fine (see my old "Sebelius/Webb '08" diaries), but she has no military experience. I don't think Richardson does either, among his other problems. Sam Nunn, too old school. Etc.
    And if you think Joe/Jane Voter doesn't really care about the "war hero" thing, re both McCain and Webb, I'm not sure you understand American politics.

    Jim Webb is essentially what John McCain should have become if McCain had made the right moral and political decisions. And Webb playing "Achilles sulking in the tent" now is not helping this country at all, I have to say. It's time for Webb to hear from the netroots who helped him so much.

    (Action info below)