1. Read about the guy who used a park bench as shelter during Hurricane Ike. And this guy:

Southwest of Galveston, officers said that one man from Surfside Beach was the only resident who did not evacuate the highly damaged area. He was drunk when they reached him on Saturday morning, the authorities said.

2. Understated Headline of the Week: Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes

3. Interesting:

Experience. In the 2008 presidential election, it’s been a campaign slogan, a debating point and a subject of endless column inches and talk show hours. John McCain and Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin — whose life experiences offer the best preparation for the presidency and vice presidency? Does it help to be a naval aviator? A community organizer? A senator? A small-town mayor? Does one trump another? To answer those questions, the Op-Ed page asked people whose résumés overlap with the candidates’ to explain how the qualities they’ve needed to draw on for their jobs and their lives would come in handy in the White House.

4. I’m looking forward to picking up Dexter Filkins’ new book, On the Ground, about his experiences reporting during the Iraq War; but I’m not a fan of this dry, loquacious review. (Though I do like that the author of the review gave a needed shout out to Michael Herr, my favorite war correspondent.)

5. Sarah Palin’s hair! How many column inches were given to the wars in which we’re embroiled?

6. And a nice little column on dating in the Google era.

Plus a bunch of other stuff you folks don’t care about.

I DO NOT WANT YOU TO READ ME THE SPEECH OBAMA IS GOING TO GIVE IN AN HOUR.

There is a reason I’m watching the Convention on television. TO WATCH OBAMA GIVE HIS ACCEPTANCE SPEECH — not hear it from you before he’s even walked onto the stage.

You bastards are like a guy in line at the theater who loudly proclaims the ending of the movie.

Off to C-SPAN for me.

An aside: Can anyone confirm that all those little flags the delegates are waving are union-made? Can’t be shipping our flag-making to China any more!

But another news item of immense import surfaced today as well: the agreement by the Iraqi and American governments on a deadline for the withdrawal of most U.S. troops by 2011.

Now, aside from the groundbreaking nature of this agreement, I would like to suggest a possible impact on the presidential election.

Given that a large part of the campaign (aside from the economy) is centered around foreign policy (especially Iraq, Afghanistan and, more recently, Georgia), does this agreement not, in some respects, take the issue of when to bring the troops home off the table?

And, if so, does that not hurt Obama more than McCain? As it is, Obama has been able to hammer McCain on his judgment in sending troops to Iraq (while Obama opposed it in the first place) and his (out of context) comment about remaining in Iraq for a hundred years. By losing this as an issue, Obama loses one of his most effective talking points and the motivation for some of his supporters to work so diligently for the campaign.

Hopefully, I am overestimating the impact this agreement will have on the campaign, but it should be interesting to watch unfold.

For the conspiracy theorists out there: Does this also not smack of a President Bush playing politics with the war?

Team:

See note below from our communications director, thanks for what you have done in last 24 hours, let’s keep it going.

From: Kevin McLaughlin
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 1:40 PM
To: Rob Jesmer
Subject: Nutroots

Rob-

2 things;

1) Our guys at the convention told us Noreiga and his out-of-state buddies spent the morning attacking Senator Cornyn

2) according to finance team, the fact that Dean and Pelosi came in to shill for Noreiga really fired up our supporters the last 24 hours. We have raised well over 10K and I think we could another 10k if we send out the email below again.

Talk soon,

Kevin

You know, it might be a good idea to hire someone (or two someone’s, since Rob Jessmer, Cornyn’s campaign manager didn’t even correct the misspelling in the e-mail) who can actually spell your opponent’s name. Especially your communications director.

As for the message . . . Noriega and the rest of the Netroots and Dem leadership who showed up bashed Cornyn!? STOP THE PRESSES! SOUND THE ALARM! TIP THE COW!

Anyway, I guess “Buck Smith”/David Beckwith must be earning his keep (and some Democratic schwag) by attending Netroots Nation.

Nonetheless, Kevin, you really need to learn how to (a) spell and (b) not make yourself look like an ass in the press (yes, I’m talking about that asinine comment about “Buck Smith” speaking for himself and all that other BS you pulled from somewhere near your nose that resembles an asshole when BOR outed Beckwith).

By the way, Kev: Since “Buck Smith” speaks for himself, why isn’t he posting on BOR any more?

In one post (referring to the “Big John” video), he commented:

“I personally believe Beckwith deserves a raise and/or a promotion for whatever role he had in that video . . .”

I want to see if recommending yourself for a raise on a blog works. So here goes:

Hey, TFN, I think I deserve a raise. How ’bout it?

Joe, same for you.

Pate got to get paid, son.

Boy, I hope it pans out well — or at least that I’m not forced to resign my positions in a few weeks when the media/blog heat has subsided.

(If this doesn’t work, I’ll try posting the request on a conservative Web site under a nom de plume.)

I keep telling myself I need to blog more — stretch my legs (or fingers) again after such a long hiatus from truly active blogging (a few times a week or month not counting). If we remember, I started blogging back in 1998 or earlier (this is before the term “blogging” was in use). But what’s the use in reminiscing? There’s too much to do now.

I need to start blogging again because I need to soon start blogging daily on the TFN blog (which is not open to the public yet).

Anyway, I’m doing my best, I guess. Just not forcing myself to pour out nonsense here every day of the week.

——-

So, as I was writing the last four paragraphs, the people I wanted to talk about first left Dolce Vita. They’d been sitting just next my friend Claire and me. They were discussing how Whole Foods gobbles up Mom ‘n Pop groceries (earlier they’d been talking about how we live under a fascist system and something about grammar). While I’m no great fan of Whole Paycheck, this seems to me to be a late-in-the-game argument: Mom and Pop were in serious trouble — if not already driven out of business — by larger grocery conglomerates far before Whole Foods became any sort of player. You’re about ten years too late, hippies. (Also, how can hippies afford to live in Hyde Park?)

—–

By the way, I’m apparently getting married.

—–

I’ve only been engaged since Saturday and I already hate wedding planning.

—–

Is it normal for one who becomes familiar with the intricacies of Texas politics to start voting against people just because they don’t like who works for them?

—–

Joaquin is eight to ten days away from graduating from Basic Combat Training for the Army. Then he heads to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri for AIT for his MOS (88M, Motor Transport Operator).

—–

I suppose that is all for now. It’s starting to rain a little here at Dolce.

Joe lied to me. He said parking would be a breeze on Saturday. Fortunately, there was a breeze as we walked from 7th Street to the Convention Center on 2nd.

We couldn’t get into the main exhibition hall because we didn’t have credentials (oh-so-Democratic!), so we headed over to another hall to scour all the booths and peer into the delegate registration areas looking for extra convention bags. I “stole” five or six delegate convention bags — the bags given to delegates commemorating the Convention and filled with schwag — at the Convention in 2004. This time, we either got there too late and they’d been hauled away the extras or they learned from last year not to leave them out. Either way, we couldn’t find any with which to, as Misty said on Twitter, abscond.

After failing to sticky-finger any bags, we wandered among the rows of Democratic organization tables, where they hawked T-shirts, buttons and god-knows-what-else. We didn’t see Joe, who was supposed to be manning the HDCC table, but we did see the abandoned TFN table — they took down their table prematurely not knowing that today would be packed.

We headed to the main exhibit hall entrance to try to see what was going on. A guy offered us Guest Passes, so we walked a quarter-mile through the Convention Center to get to the guest entrance only to find that it was a big-screen feed from the main hall. Motherfucker.

They started the ceremonies and then broke in with Hillary Clinton’s concession speech (finally!), but the feed kept dying, Hillary kept freezing on the screen and the audio went dead repeatedly. We finally headed home.

Now we’re drinking at Dolce Vita and considering heading to the Helio Sequence show at Mohawk.

There’s been a lot of, frankly, ridiculous prophesying that Obama or Clinton will show up, but that has finally been put to rest by Obama tapping Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (he with the eyebrow) to attend on his behalf and Clinton’s all-but-certain withdrawal from the race on Saturday. Still, some people just never give up hope (it took him until the Clinton campaign announced its ending to get the picture).

Along with the convention there always comes a host of parties thrown by legislators, lobbyists, supporters of presidential candidates and, well, bloggers. While the Texas “‘netroots” (or “Texroots”) may not be the powerful political force they believe themselves to be, I’m certain they’re fun to get drunk with. Personally, I want to see Vince Leibowitz table-dance.

While I’d like to say that I will attend the Blogger’s Caucus or one of the many other parties, I can’t guarantee anything. See, after I have my double whiskey and three beers at Dolce Vita on the way home from work (usually between four and six) each day, I rarely want to venture out once I get home.

Not that it matters if I show up. I’m no big Texas political personality. In fact, I’ve only ever broken one story (this, obviously, doesn’t count because it was IRL rather than online), and most of the blogosphere probably still resents me for running Ray McMurrey‘s unsuccessful campaign against Rick Noriega (our campaign still being the best thing to ever happen to Rick).

So, maybe I’ll make it to a party — especially the Blogger’s Caucus — and maybe I won’t. No biggie. I’ll get drunk either way and no one will miss me.

UPDATE: Yes, that is a picture of me on the cover of this magazine.

You (Obama) lifted your finger to your face, and you, you know, “scratched.” Sure, it might have looked innocent enough. Faces itch sometimes, whatever. But we know what you were doing. We know why you used your middle finger to do it. Mr. Obama, you Flipped the Bird. And, on behalf of Hillary Clinton—obviously, the intended recipient of your crude gesture—we are Very Offended.

Please. Say it ain’t so.

[Columbia Journalism Review]

Hamas, on the State Department Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization list, has all but endorsed Senator Obama . . .

–The Tank, a National Review Online blog

Well, we knew this would come around sooner or later. The primary isn’t even over yet! Can’t these Hamas guys at least hold out until the convention, like Hillary’s doing?

But, seriously, this is the first Republican “terrorists-support-the-Democrats” attack I’ve seen from a prominent conservative blog and magazine this election (which isn’t to say there haven’t been more).