The Democratic National Committee announced today that it was replacing its Keynote Speaker slot from Gov. Mark Warner (VA) to Congressman Dennis Kucinich (OH).

DNC spokesperson Mary Thorne spoke at a hastily arranged press conference Wednesday evening. "Senator Obama, whom you all know is our almighty boss and we have to do whatever he says, gave the order this afternoon. "We are simply following Senator McCain's precedent of giving the Keynote Address to the fifth place challenger in the primaries. Rudy Giuliani finished behind McCain, Huckabee, Romney, and Paul. Likewise, Kucinich finished behind Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and Richardson.

Current conventional wisdom says that Obama will choose for Vice President either Joe Biden or Evan Bayh. Let's make our preferences clear to the Obama campaign.

I know that there are other candidates for vice president. This diary does not address those candidates, not because I don't like them, but because conventional wisdom, as I perceive it, has cast them as irrelevant. Sorry.

Update: This story probably means I'm an idiot.

Sens. Evan Bayh (Ind.) and Joseph Biden (Del.) and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson are joining former President Bill Clinton in speaking from the podium Wednesday night.

Here's the "well maybe it isn't Kaine" CYA:

The Illinois senator could conceivably pick from one of the names already scheduled to speak that night, simply moving them to another spot in the order.

Yes, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.

I have a confession to make: I don't care all that much about the people in the Republic of Georgia. I don't like seeing them get killed, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. For that matter, I don't much care about the folks in Iraq and Afghanistan, either, but I feel much worse because my country's military is killing them.

If the State of Georgia was attacked, I would be very upset. Yes, it's in the south, and consistently votes for Republican candidates for President, but Atlanta's a nice enough time, and goddamn, it is a part of America. But the Republic of Georgia? Not so much.

Whew! I just got the news that Obama has surged to a three point lead in the Gallup daily tracking poll. 46% to 43%. I guess I can quit panicking about Obama's strategy now.

I really think Gallup should do hourly tracking. Daily tracking is so 2003. Hourly tracking probably won't be fast enough for us. Perhaps we need something like the Verizon commercial: "Do you like Obama now?"

Will somebody please explain to me how I can prevent my head from exploding before November comes?

Several news outlets are reporting that Obama's shortlist include Bayh, Biden and Kaine. I'm not going to bore you with my opinion of these three guys, since you have your own opinion already.

However, it is incumbent on us as a community to give the Obama campaign our recommendation. This will let them know what to expect when Obama makes his final decision. We don't want a situation where they tell us, "But if we only knew how you felt about Mr. X."

This poll does not include other candidates because I do not think they are relevant. Obama might choose someone else - I don't care.

I propose that you vote based on your recommendation of who Obama should pick, not necessarily who you like best. You might like Mr. X, but you think that Mr. Y will help more in the general election. So without further ado...

It's fun to watch a Republican campaign as poorly run as McCain's. But it makes me wonder: what would I do if I were suddenly put in charge of his campaign? My first reaction would be to run it even further into the ground. You might think that's not possible, but like the man said, politics is the art of the possible.

But what if I were like the Alec Guinness character in Bridge on the River Kwai, and became strangely compelled to reconstruct the McCain  Campaign. What would I do?

McCain quips...

"Arizona may be the only state in America where mothers don't tell their children that some day they can grow up and be president," McCain quipped Sunday.

...and Obama quips too...

"They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black," Mr. Obama quipped.

Quip is a snooty word that you read all the time but never hear in actual conversations.

Today I am wondering whether quip is a racist word.

Google News search:
"McCain quipped"  325 hits
"Obama quipped"   2 hits

Apparently the news media feels that McCain's bon mots rose to the level of a quip, whereas Obama's did not. When Obama says something witty, he merely jokes.

Google News:

"McCain joked" 71 hits
"Obama joked" 329 hits

What is it about this site and bad news? Jesse Jackson wants to snip Obama's balls off, but you'd have to search around to find word about it here. Unless I'm mistaken (and I hope I am), there aren't any recommended diaries about this, nor is it in a front-page article. In what alternative universe is this site living in that the biggest campaign news of the day is summarily ignored? Where'd y'all work for before you came here? Pravda or Izvestia?

In light of the Associated Press's innovative fee schedule, I have decided to offer a fee schedule for those of you who want to steal my words.

(Fee schedule after the jump)

This is just a friendly reminder to all Kossacks living in Maryland's 4th Congressional District that today there is a special election to replace Al Wynn. If you will recall, she beat Wynn in the primary in February. Then Wynn decided to quit and become a lobbyist, necessitating the need for this special election. While it's a shame that the state has to pay for Wynn's greed, it's great that she can get in early and start kicking butt. This will also put her ahead in seniority of all the freshmen coming in next January.

She doesn't have much in the way of competition. Her Republican opponent is some cookoo who thinks that the federal reserve is evil. Some libertarian dude is also on the ballot.

Still, you don't want the election to be like that Simpson's episode where Bart wages a spirited campaign, only to lose because he and all his friends forgot to vote.

I arrived at my polling place around 7:05, and was the second person to vote. There were three other folks in line.

Poll hours are 7 AM to 8 PM.

When I see a sentence punctuated with a period between every word (e.g. Grow. The. F***. Up. I picture in my mind a hyperactive gum-snapping thirteen-year-old girl speaking rapidly on a cellphone: "Oh my God. You just won't believe what happened...and anyways, he says, "yo, come on over," and I'm like Shut. The Fuck. Up. I did, too! You should have seen it..."

Nobody cares what anybody says on this site about Tim Russert. Nobody. Why don't you all pass a platform plank decreeing that Tim Russert was a swell guy, and that it is the sense of the Daily Kos Senate that he should be remembered as such?

You say that people on this site are saying nasty things about him. Really? I hadn't noticed. I don't read every frickin' diary, every frickin' comment. Who the hell has time to? I only found out about it because of the breathless diaries on the recommended list are wailing over the injustice of it all.

Michael Kinsley in today's New York Times has his own take on what went wrong with Hillary's campaign:

The theme of this campaign has been umbrage. The candidates took turns pretending to be offended by something another candidate had said — or the other candidate’s failure to denounce what some third party had said.

All the candidates played this game, but Mrs. Clinton played it with the most unscrupulous joy. The low point was when she piled on during the ridiculous debate about whether Mr. Obama harbored snooty attitudes toward small towns in Pennsylvania.

I for one am sick and tired of this fake umbrage and I propose we do something about it to end it now!

Mainstream media outlets such as ESPN and Fox Sports are erroneously reporting that the Chicago Cubs are the best team in Major League Baseball. But they are only counting wins and loses, and are ignoring the most important stat of all. The Texas Rangers have the most total bases of any team in Major League Baseball.

Total Bases (according to MLB.com, 06/01/2008, 9:15 PM)
Texas Rangers 924
Philadelphia Phillies 917
Chicago Cubs 904

Why is the media ignoring this? It's simple - they want the Cubs to win. It fits into their story line of the lovable Cubs finally winning after 100 years of misery.

Sadly, it includes me, too, but only when I absolutely can't help myself, like when an important election is happening. Last Tuesday I watched for about thirty seconds to get the gist of what the yappers were saying. Then I followed the results on cnn.com and checked for other updates on DailyKos.

We all know that TV news sucks. We all know you can get the news faster and more accurately through the internet. Yet so many of the people on this site are truly obsessed about the news, following rating points more closely than network execs. The only conclusion I can make is that when it comes to TV news, the folks on this site are stupid.

You know it's true. You hate that it's true, but you love that it worked.

Thankfully, third-party pinheads are relatively few at DKos. So maybe I'm preaching to the choir. But it seems to me that if one takes away only one thing from the Texas county conventions on Saturday, it's this: the Democratic Party is alive and well and kicking ass.

I worked in Systems at the Social Security Administration (SSA) headquarters outside of Baltimore for three years. On the first day I joined, I had to sign two papers that made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that trying to access social security records for profit, or even just snooping around would cost me my job and probably land me in jail. Every year thereafter, I had to sign the same papers again.

It was no idle threat. My boss told me that he had seen people carted away in handcuffs.

But besides these very real threats, SSA also has tracking software, and, if my memory serves, something called the "celebrity list" (I think that's what they called it, but I can't remember for sure).