Ah, well don’t we feel stupid, Barack Obama’s “fired up, ready to go” Civil War re-enactment at a packed University of Maryland Comcast Center yesterday was, in fact, just a music video shoot! This one-minute DNC ad “will air on national cable and in the DC area, as well as on 40 liberal blogs.” AD $$$ YOU SAY? Hmm, we better brush up on our bona fides… REPBULICANS SUCK. END EVERY WAR. BE GAY. Pleeeeease? [First Read]

Well look at this! The DNC has made the decision to go out of its way, now, to engage Dick Cheney and his cartoonish teevee babble about murder and blood and global sadness. Maybe now that the mighty DNC has spoken up, teevee anchors will be too scared to bring Dick Cheney on their shows to tell his lies! This is how things work, on television. [Greg Sargent]

• MICHAEL STEELE RESPONDS TO RNC-REROUTING-PHONE-CALLS-TO-DNC-GATE: A kindly news-scribe at CBS credits your Wonkette for first “flagging” the bit about how the RNC has been redirecting DNC-instigated calls back to the DNC all day, and then, comically, asks Michael Steele about this: “Steele, sounding angry, then said, ‘don’t sit there and think that you’re going to direct a bunch of angry liberals’ to the RNC … ‘To sit back and say that this is some Republican cabal is a bunch of baloney,’ he said. ‘And you can substitute that B for something else if you want.’” A barrel of baloney? [CBS]

Here’s a fresh, confrontational new DNC ad telling people (rightly) to expect violent, insane crowds of mouth-breathing wingnuts at their local health care town halls this month unless they call the RNC immediately and ask, “please rein in your violent, insane crowds of mouth-breathing wingnuts at my local health care town halls.” But according to rich telephone-owning operative “RoseAnn,” the RNC number provided in the ad just takes you right back to the lousy gay Democrats: “When you call the RNC to complain … they connect you to the DNC - i called back and pushed const. affairs instead and the lady there laughed about it - and said the dems called us nazis so we have to fight fire w/ fire….” Another exciting Wednesday in Washington! [YouTube]

A number of understandably perplexed readers have forwarded us this weird, offensive e-mail from the notorious spammer “Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com,” who wants us to donate money to the DNC — one dollar a day “until real health insurance reform is signed into law,” so as to “show the insurance companies and their allies in Congress that their delay tactics will only make our movement stronger.” Well that’s a great idea, pretend Obama organizing troupe at the DNC! But down here on Planet Earth, we’re going to tell you “no,” and also maybe to eat a bag of lightly salted poison rat dicks. MORE »

Last year’s Democratic presidential primary was the most fun a girl could have with her clothes on. We watched for five(ish) agonizing months as the candidates hauled their carcasses around America’s forgotten backwaters, pretending to enjoy corndogs and common people, while Mark Penn quietly fulminated in the background because he forgot that Democrats did not use a winner-take-all system. What devilish tricks might the new Democratic Change Commission — a body of 37 unfortunates created by the Democratic National Convention Rules Committee — do to make the process even more convoluted and frustrating the next go-round? MORE »

That President Obama sure knows how to throw a party! Last night he entertained 250 of his favorite famous friends, plus “the entire Avant family” which we have never heard of, at a swank Beverly Hills fundraiser that featured coked-out midgets on swings and flying horse tricks. MORE »

Arlen Specter, what’s up with that guy, right. He’s a Democrat now! And being a Democrat means you have to do terrible abortion things in Hollywood, all the time, with Muslims: “Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) will make his debut appearance this evening at a national Dem event since switching parties. Specter will join Pres. Obama at the Beverly Hilton in LA for a DNC fundraiser… It marks his first outing with Obama — and with Jennifer Hudson, we should note. The Academy Award winner will sing at the event. As will Earth, Wind and Fire.” And it only costs $1,000 to $2,500 to attend! Or if you’re super rich like Tom Cruise and the famous Movie Stars, there’s “another dinner” for, uh, $30,400 (but it’s a DEAL because that’s the PER COUPLE price.) [Hotline]

How to describe the music playing in the background here? It’s hold music, isn’t it, like what you hear while you wait 20 minutes to speak with a Capital One representative? Or is it what you hear piped in while you’re waiting for your 40-minute “Shiatsu” massage in one of those mall massage chains? Perhaps it’s the soundtrack of thousands of Vietnamese nail salons across the US. Whatever it is, it is INAPPROPRIATE for a humorless DNC ad about how Republicans are “hypocrites” for voting for a Republican president’s budget but not a Democratic one’s. Such a serious occasion obviously calls for Barber’s Adagio for Strings. [YouTube]

Remember how awesome the news was this time last year, all full of “Hillary Clinton called Barack Obama a plagiarist” and “Mark Penn sucks balls” and that time the governor of New York got caught with an unimaginatively tattooed hooker who had a Hit Song on Myspace for like a day and a half? Jesus God, those were glorious days. We had no AIG to worry about, our dollars were still worth a dollar, and this here web site wrote about politics instead of boring financial news all the time. MORE »

Doctor Howard Dean got a new job! He will be a “regular contributor” on CNBC, the important business channel which features idiots screaming at each other all day as the stock market does whatever it does — up some days, down some days, etc. Today he did a guest-hosting deal, on some CNBC show. Maybe he’s on right now, who knows! You see, only idiots watch CNBC. It’s a place for cocaine addicts and self-hating day traders and insane old people who think they can “beat the market” and actual retarded people who grab the phone away from the nurse and yell “BOO-YAH.” In other teevee shout-y news, Chris Matthews will be on MSNBC for another four years, which means he won’t be running for the Senate or whatever. [Sam Stein/New York Times]