• Obama, to prove he does not hate New Orleans and has zero plans to willfully destroy it—as per the tradition of his predecessor—will visit this afternoon. [Los Angeles Times]
• Over 30 people were killed in a series of coordinated terrorist goings-on in Islamabad. [New York Times]
• The Arctic’s ice will be completely gone in 20 years. Add “carbon emissions” to “rock salt” on the national What Melts Snow list. [Times Online]
• Obama wants to give $250 to every senior and disabled person this winter, since there will not be the traditional increase on Social Security benefit checks. [Washington Post]
• Probationary Kennedy Maria Shriver has apologized for talking on her cell phone while driving, for such is illegal in California. This is like literally the third time this has happened. [CNN]
• Uhh… the Germans are constructing a new Berlin Wall, out of Styrofoam… because they want to knock it down again. Ha ha.  It seems this is how most things start, in Germany. [WSJ]

• Matt Yglesias wants to sex machen with German Mädchen, big time. [Matt Yglesias]
• Rush Limbaugh was curled up on his La-Z-boy. He had just finished reading Du Bois’ The Souls of White Folk and was feeling particularly vulnerable. Opiates helped relieve the pain, but it’s hard being white in a black man’s world. Rush cut up a few lines of Oxycontin with his Price Chopper Chopper Shopper Card. I will start the white civil rights movement he thought to himself. And then he celebrated with some Oxycontin up his nose. [Think Progress]
• For the man who has everything except a Michele Bachmann action figure. [TPM]
• The brave Americans who defended Alaska from the Japanese during the Battle of Midway will receive a pension of Zero Yen if Barack Obama has his way — and he always has his way! Meanwhile, Barack is busy eating ice cream cones. Despicable. [RedState]
• Onward, Christian soldiers! [True/Slant: Laurie Essig]

• Barack Obama demanded that Iran turn over blueprints to its underground ex-secret nuclear hideaway, and threatened to take away the US’s gas and oil investment money. Iran responded by test-firing a bunch of short-range missiles and then claiming they were medium-range missiles. Sassy/grim! [New York Times]
• NATO and the US have decided to side with current Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai in his quest to continue to be President of Afghanistan, despite very mean-spirited gossip about how the election was maybe a sham. [Washington Post]
• Angela Merkel and her party, the Christian Democratic Union, have WON THE COUNTRY OF GERMANY for another four years. Well, congratulations. [Wall Street Journal]
• Flighty auteur Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland of all places for the his famous sex crime of sex with a 13 year old in 1978. [Los Angeles Times]
• William Safire died this weekend. Before his noted death, he was also famous for writing a bunch of lies for Richard Nixon and as well as the New York Times‘ “On Language” column. [Reuters]
• The more Obama insists that New York Governor David Paterson not attempt to be governor again, the more committed Paterson is to doing exactly that. [CNN]

Oh look it’s that guy from Get Carter, the one who Michael Caine finds at the racetrack wearing a sweet pair of shades! No wait, it’s a lost member of Monty Python who gave up acting for a sweet hippie chick in Haight-Ashbury and was last seen in the Mojave Desert, high on peyote and wearing a bearskin. No wait again, it’s the first person of Turkish descent to lead a German political party. Huzzah for German Green party chairman Cem Ozdemir, the Barack Obama of Europe! [International Herald Tribune]

Here’s a lengthy segment from MSNBC today, where lovely anchor/reporter Andrea Mitchell talks on the telephone to McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, the adult retarded child responsible for that hilarious memo yesterday about Obama’s food choices, excercise regimen and overall popularity everywhere. He’s a twit. He tells Andrea that the McCain campaign has always been positive and not Trivial; it is focused on Important Issues like offshore drilling. Andrea’s like, “you’re an idiot, you stupid idiot” and Rick’s like, “no Barry Obama is an idiot.” The best part is when they talk about peanut butter snacks 12 minutes in. Peanut butter snacks… [MSNBC]

OK, so maybe the McCain campaign has done its private polling and thinks this stuff will work, but… couldn’t they try to be slightly more ridiculous? We speak of the memo that idiot campaign manager Rick Davis sent out today: “Only a celebrity of Barack Obama’s magnitude could attract 200,000 fans in Berlin who gathered for the mere opportunity to be in his presence. These are not supporters or even voters, but fans fawning over The One. Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand ‘MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew — Black Forest Berry Honest Tea’ and worry about the price of arugula.” What is this saying, exactly? MORE »

YOU ALL SUCK: The Obama campaign has surprisingly responded to that latest piece of shit McCain ad, probably because they thought of this nifty line and just had to do it!: “On a day when major news organizations across the country are taking Senator McCain to task for a steady stream of false, negative attacks, his campaign has launched yet another. Or, as some might say, ‘Oops! He did it again.’” Oh brother. Can’t you old perverts leave poor Britney alone? She has enough damn problems already. [Politico/Ben Smith]

Working for the Republican National Committee would be so freaking fun. When your electorate consists of the dumbest shits in the country, even the simplest, most transparent appeals to nativism, homophobia, or provincialism will preserve your monolithic base’s loyalty for decades. And so here’s the latest creative output from the RNC — which, along with BarackBook.com, constitutes the “July 29 RNC Twofer.” It is a comical video about what an Obama commercial in Germany would look like. Deep techno beats, robots, gay flashing colors, David Hasselhoff, anti-American German interviews, various other Eurotrash tropes. And you must watch the very end. Oh, it’s really not an option. [YouTube]

Last week all the Obamatards hated Andrea Mitchell for complaining about how Barack Obama didn’t invite the press to his basketball games in Iraq. This week they will love Andrea Mitchell for saying this McCain attack ad is “literally not true.” You know, the one about how Showboat Barry wouldn’t visit the troops in Germany because he couldn’t bring along cameras. (The truth is that he gave the troops the brushoff because he was busy inventing man-made AIDS.) [YouTube via Huffington Post]

The first three paragraphs of New York Times “lightning rod conservative” columnist Bill Kristol’s fare today:

Life is full of disappointments.

Early Friday, I went to the Real Clear Politics Web site, as I do every morning, for my fix of political news and commentary. I perked up when I saw the third entry on the list of that day’s notable articles — “No. 44 Has Spoken.”

“Hank Aaron has spoken? Wow,” I thought as I clicked through.

You’ve gotta be a rare strain of “cheeky asshat” to write this horseshit every week. [NYT]

While John McCain was waddling behind a housewife and knocking over the apple sauce in a grocery store, Barack Obama had a German Gym Workout with a young lady reporter from the German paper BILD. And she is not going to forget that anytime soon. Let’s enjoy her sexytime memories, together. MORE »