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)

    I could probably not be called a big fan of Jesse Helms, having driven all the way across the country in 1990 to volunteer for his Democratic opponent Harvey Gantt in the North Carolina U.S. senatorial race that year. The infamous "hands ad", with white hands crumpling a paper because "racial quotas" gave the job to someone else, I saw on a TV in North Carolina during that campaign: and it was unpleasant, believe me.
    And he was not an especially gallant opponent, unlike, say, William F. Buckley, Jr.; although I have joked before that a Jesse Jackson/Jesse Helms ticket would be the ultimate in balance and diversity, Helms' bigotry in racial and sexual orientation matters, among other things, does not cut a very fine record. We know this.

    Still, he didn't have horns. He adopted a lonely child with cerebral palsy. He worked with Bono on international debt relief, and after meeting Bono apologized for his meanness about AIDS.

    It's nice to see Fancy Nancy is now attending Netroots N, so that someone of some current political importance is attending. (If she shows up; remember what Pelosi did last year?) Still, what about You-Know-Who? Where the boo-hoo is Barack H.O.?
    (As per my previous diary, with poll showing Kossacks very much want him to attend)

    ...Back on the first July 4, when our ancestors were sweating to death at Valley Forge (maybe I've got the seasons wrong), did you hear THEM saying, "Ohhh, we're afraid to go to the big bad blog conference, we might get criticized?" Well o.k., NNation didn't exist, but they wouldn't have shied away if it did.
    (And anyway, Barack can do a better Sister Souljah if he attends NN and shouts, "You pinko pundits with Pentiums!", than if he stays away)

    I hear Mr. Obama likes faith-based initiatives these days. Well, let's see if he can keep some faith with the people who did so much for his campaign, and whom he expects to do more. I sure hope he has that cowboy hat, so he can wave it around onstage in Austin. . .

    Simple question.

    ...I may be missing something, but it seems that besides reliable fireplug Howard Dean and a few pundits, there seems to be a serious lack of political--I didn't say "star"--firepower at the upcoming NN.

    Especially compared to last year, when practically every Dem candidate came to the forum.

    If Barack Obama wants to Sister Souljah the netroots by refusing to attend Netroots Nation, that's a serious problem. After all the netroots did for him. (But how much will they do for him in the future if he doesn't pay appropriate respect? And I don't mean a "special videotaped message" from him, either. He can keep that for himself, I wouldn't want to see it.)

    So his absence (and maybe even the absence of others, including a New York senator, a former North Carolina senator, a present Nevada senator and majority leader, etc.) would be a serious comedown from previous conventions. Would the first Netroots Nation even be worth attending? One wonders.
       

    So now Kos is making $$ from male escorts? Cf. the current classified ad on DKos, with frontpage text

Executive Male Escorts

Traveling? Or just horny for a hot guy? Nominated "Best Escort Site 2003-2007" by CyberSocket Magazine! Your pleasure is most important for ALL these polished & professional male escorts worldwide! Each ad has photos, bio, stats, reviews & contact info. Listings are FREE!

    Now does Kos HAVE to take any Blogads submission? If the Klan bought an ad, would he have to run it? Hm.
    Hello Jeff Gannon!!

   $$$ makes peeps go Krazy!!! !

    See AFP via Breitbart, Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel: Obama,

    US Democratic presumptive nominee Barack Obama said Wednesday that Jerusalem must remain the "undivided" capital of Israel in a speech to a powerful US-Israel lobby group here.
    "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided," Obama told the vast annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Council (AIPAC). ...

    Hmm.

    It's bad enough that El K dropped his book on libertarian Democrats; now he has the temerity to do another one instead, and with

     HIS BIG OL NAME

going in krossword-puzzle style down the title. Talk about ego! Woooooh! Don't let your head get too big Mr. K!!

    Now if someone really KOOL were to do this, say, Harvey Korman (RIP) were to publish (have published) a book titled

      "King
       Of
       Really
       Manic
       Asinine
       Nonsense"

, I could see that. But who's this Kos guy??

    Oh well he deserves some fun. Kongratulations!

    Not the engineer of the Enterprise; he doesn't exist. The other one.

    Yeah, I know, DKos frontpagers hate him, he wants to sell his book, he should have told us this stuff years earlier, bla bla. But if even Darth Vader can get redeemed at the end, I don't know why Scott McClellan can't.
    I suppose El Lessig will be of some interest as an NN speaker, but the Scott would likely be even more interesting: people turning from the "Dark Side", even with mixed motives, make for pretty good drama.
    And Rove-ocop said ScMcC was like a left wing blogger! Well well! Why not make the joke into the truth? !

    See you in Austin-sounds-like-Boston, Mr. "What Happened"! No one can say NN isn't bipartisan once in a while...