Hello, everyone. It's summer now, and it's hotter than hell here in Portland: 96 degrees and sunny for the weekend. When the heat is this unbearable, you do what you can to stay cool, from sitting in air conditioning and drinking plenty of water to putting ice on your feet and neck. So come on kids, and get the cool, soothing, refreshing ITEMS!

You'd think I'd feel better this week. After all, Barack Obama got the endorsement of Al Gore, my brother's starting a start-up, I'm doing some machine learning work pro bono, my wife's post-graduation job search is moving along, and after all, it's now summer.

And frankly, I was in a good mood just 24 hours ago. Then much like some white stuff on Mars, it just disappeared for some very significant reason. Can't put my finger on it....

JEERS to hanging up on us.  Once again, the Democratic leadership fights tooth and nail to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Even after hearing the most shocking testimony by insiders, the House might as well have just passed a bill today with two words for the phone companies: "FREE PASS."

Oh yeah. That.

To hell with it. On with the ITEMS!

I still can't believe John McCain said this.

And now, some ITEMS!

So -- now the general election begins in earnest. It's Obama:

Versus McCain:

Otherwise known as "My shoe vs. ant."

And now, some ITEMS!

So yeah -- nothing at all important going on this morning, right?

I'm just wishing that we'd get the hell over this and start fighting against our real opponent in this election:

And now, some ITEMS!

So, I don't have a video of McCain doing something stupid this week. What I have instead is a request.

Could Senator Clinton, Reverend Wright, Senator McCain, and their respective spokespeople, please, please, please, pretty please go through the next two weeks without saying something else that is catastrophically dumb to the point that it makes my brain ache something awful? Please? I'm already low on IQ points as it is; I don't need to lose more trying to understand what kind of person says that sort of thing.

Please? For America?

Thanks.

And now, on to the ITEMS!

Via the Chicago Tribune

The military cannot automatically discharge people because they're gay, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday in the case of a decorated flight nurse who sued the Air Force over her dismissal.

The three judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not strike down the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. But they reinstated Maj. Margaret Witt's lawsuit, saying the Air Force must prove that her dismissal furthered the military's goals of troop readiness and unit cohesion.

It's not over for the ban on gays in the military, but its days are, as the article says, probably numbered. More on why below the cut.

And Now, John McCain versus -- er, John McCain.

And now, some ITEMS!

The GOP has announced their new slogan for the 2008 campaign, and as you can see, it's a real winner:

THE CHANGE YOU DESERVE

No, I'm not kidding. It's real. Go over the fold to hear all the horrible details.

Two-term conservative Republican and reliable Bush sycophant Gordon Smith has been running ads in Oregon claiming to be, I kid you not, the candidate of change.

Fortunately, he's been getting the smackdown right back.

I'm really looking forward to kicking his ass in November.

And now, some ITEMS!

Even though Obama's upcoming win in the race to be the Democratic nominee is pretty much obvious to everyone including Time Magazine, that hasn't stopped the Clinton campaign from continuing to argue to superdelegates that she would make the stronger candidate.

You might wonder what kind of arguments the Clinton camp is making. Well, wonder no more. Talking Points Memo has one of her MS PowerPoint presentations here, which details her arguments that she can win "tough districts." It's an exercise largely in Chewbacca logic, but it's worth examining, anyway, if only to see what the Clinton campaign thinks about the superdelegates, mostly with respect to their collective IQs.

Note: I'm not claiming that this is the only argument Clinton is making, or that she's making it to all supers; only that this is one of her arguments, as per TPM. With that, on with the show!

I'm going to come right out and say it: this was not the best week for the netroots. There was an awful lot of really, really dumb stuff that flew around the netroots since the last GMDKWE, not the least of which was the whole flap about the un-doctored and yet suggestively subtitled footage from The War Room. The unfortunate part of living in the DailyKos echo chamber, though, is that things like that are going to surface, spread like wildfire, and then dominate the conversation. And then people end up looking dumb as a result.

Which is really unfortunate, because -- lest we forget -- we still have this to fight:

And now, on with the ITEMS!

It's over! Barack is down 70 points in every poll! Reverend Wright is on every TV station 24-7 with ominous music playing, just like on 9/11/01! The superdelegates are fleeing like rats off a sinking ship! Hillary is dancing! McCain is salivating! The world hates us! Karl Rove has had his revenge!

This week, Obama looked ahead:

Clinton breathed relief:

And McCain....

President Putin of what?

And now, some ITEMS!

I should have started last week's GMDKWE with this:

Uh ... actually, yes, they would.

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Back another lifetime ago, I was a student at Purdue University. I mostly remember that it was a hotbed of content, a place where people were all too proud of Dan Quayle, their beloved Senator. Which is why it still surprises me to hear about people there really going for Obama in a big way.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton campaigned a week earlier at West Lafayette HS:

And McCain? McCain? McCain? (News flash, Senator: Indiana isn't in the bag this time.)

And now some ITEMS!

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the horrific death of Martin Luther King. I think it's very instructive to look at how our Presidential candidates reacted to this occasion. Hillary Clinton was honest and reflective:

Barack Obama was grand and wise:

And John McCain?

God. We're gonna destroy him.

And now, some ITEMS!

DISCLAIMER! I'm a Ford shareholder.

I just downloaded the shareholder's report for Ford Motor Company. I bought the stock at $6 a share on the theory that the stock can't just become worthless. I figured that maybe, eventually, management would turn things around -- either because they wised up on their own, or because an activist shareholder came in and demanded sweeping changes. I began to panic when I heard they were selling Land Rover. But now it looks like they're making sweeping changes. Sweeping, progressive changes.

More below the fold.