It would be easy to read this story and point to the sheer stupidity of the people profiled.

Against all apparent evidence, these people chose to believe demonstrably false rumors about presidential candidate Barack Obama.

In fact, when offered evidence to refute the rumors, they cling (yeah, cling) to the false narratives.

On his corner of College Street, Jim Peterman stares at the four American flags planted in his front lawn and rubs his forehead. Peterman, 74, is a retired worker at Cooper Tire, a father of two, an Air Force veteran and a self-described patriot. He took one trip to Washington in 1989 — best vacation of his life — and bought a statue of the Washington Monument that he still displays in a glass case in his living room.

He believes a smart vote is an American’s greatest responsibility. Which is why his confusion about Barack Obama continues to eat at him.

On the television in his living room, Peterman has watched enough news and campaign advertisements to hear the truth: Sen. Barack Obama, born in Hawaii, is a Christian family man with a track record of public service. But on the Internet, in his grocery store, at his neighbor’s house, at his son’s auto shop, Peterman has also absorbed another version of the Democratic candidate’s background, one that is entirely false: Barack Obama, born in Africa, is a possibly gay Muslim racist who refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

“It’s like you’re hearing about two different men with nothing in common,” Peterman said. “It makes it impossible to figure out what’s true, or what you can believe.”

The writer of this Washington Post piece then takes a survey of a street, named College Street, no less, of what would have to be the most stupid collection of neighbors ever assembled in one place. The only problem: They are more typical than they are the exception.

We, Americans, are, indeed, that stupid.

Take dumb-asses like Pollard in the Post story:

“I think Obama would be a disaster, and there’s a lot of reasons,” said Pollard, explaining the rumors he had heard about the candidate from friends he goes camping with. “I understand he’s from Africa, and that the first thing he’s going to do if he gets into office is bring his family over here, illegally. He’s got that racist [pastor] who practically raised him, and then there’s the Muslim thing. He’s just not presidential material, if you ask me.”

Pollard believes Obama is a Muslim and that he has a racist pastor who “practically raised him.” Obama is either a Christian raised by a “racist pastor,” or a Muslim. He cannot possibly be both. But that does not deter this idiot.

I won’t repeat any more their inanities about Obama being Muslim or gay, or his being from Africa, as if any of those things would be wrong (except to point out you still have to be born on American soil in order to run for the presidency).

This story makes me sad. And angry.

Jeanette Collins, a 77-year-old, uttered perhaps the truest words in the piece: “All I know for sure about Obama is that we’re not ready for him.”

Only the aforementioned Peterman remains open-minded on College St., and he’s swaying to the beat of the rumors.

“I don’t know. The whole thing just scares me,” Peterman said. “I’m almost starting to feel like the best choice is not voting at all.”

The rumors have so far defied both the Truth Squad that the Obama campaign has sent out and the efforts of enlightened people who have offered their neighbors actual facts, instead of rumors.

Gerri Kish, a 66-year-old born in Hawaii, read both of Obama’s autobiographies. She has close friends, she said, who still refuse to believe her when she swears Obama is Christian. Then she hands them the books, and they refuse to read them. “They just want to believe what they believe,” she said. “Nothing gets through to them.”

The new advertisement running in Findlay, in which Obama is pictured with his white mother and white grandparents as he talks about developing a “deep and abiding faith in the country I love” while growing up in the Kansas heartland, is dismissed by residents of College Street as the desperate lies of another dishonest Washington politician.

For the past month, two students from the University of Findlay have spent their Tuesday nights walking from door to door in the city to tell voters about Obama. Erik Cramer and Sarah Everly target Democrats and swing voters exclusively, but they’ve still experienced mixed results. Sometimes, at a front door, they mention their purpose only to have a dozen rumors thrown back at them and the door slammed. “People tell us that we’re in the wrong town,” Everly said.

Soon, on a Tuesday night, they’ll walk down College Street — past the American flags, past the LeMasters, past the Pollards — and knock on Jim Peterman’s front door. They will ask for two minutes of his time, and Peterman will give it to them. He will listen to their story, weighing facts against fiction. For a few minutes, he might even believe them.

Then he’ll close his door and go inside, back to his life. Back to his grocery store, back to his son’s auto shop, back to the gossip on College Street. Back to the rumors again.

Thank you for accepting me as a friend. I am an elected delegate for Obama to the national convention, and a candidate for Congress in the Ca-48 district.
I have compressed 8 years of scandals into a 3 1/2 minute music video I made. I call it “More Republican Scandals.” You can watch it by hitting the link below.
http://www.actblue.com/page/scandal
Thanks, 
Steve

ActBlue — More Republican Scandals- The Video

Source: www.actblue.com

If you like the video, contribute $10 or more. It will help put Steve in Congress, and after all isn’t that a small price to pay to help restore trust in our government?Want to see my positions on the important issues facing America? Go to www.steveyoungforcongress.com

Lieberman Must Go!

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Conclusion

A majority of Americans oppose the Iraq war but some are still planning to support John McCain. That is the primary reason why I’m hoping Sen. Barack Obama will choose Gen. Wesley Clark as his running mate.

Clark is a retired four-star general, former NATO CINC, staunch opponent of the Iraq war from the beginning, clean-cut, white, and Southern; hence, his appeal to the middle and voters concerned about Obama on national security issues. Please take the time to read his profile.

Obama has a clear advantage over McCain on domestic issues, which are polling as the “most important” issues for voters during this election; however, many Americans opposed to the war in Iraq are still willing to vote for McCain because of his military credentials.

Therefore, Obama should select a strong, well-known military leader to be at his right-hand throughout the general election and the GRADUAL withdrawl of troops from Iraq. Like Obama, Gen. Clark has always opposed the war in Iraq. Together, they could appeal to the middle and sweep the electoral map in November.

I posted a couple of bits by comic George Carlin last week. He was very, very funny. He took ill yesterday and died. A couple of obits:

Comedian George Carlin Dies

One of America’s most popular and often controversial comedians, George Carlin, died in Santa Monica, California. He was 71.

How George Carlin Changed Comedy

When the culture began to change in the late 1960s — when the old one-liner comics on the Ed Sullivan Show were looking pretty tired and irrelevant to a younger generation experimenting with drugs and protesting the War in Vietnam — George Carlin was the most important stand-up comedian in America. By the time he died Sunday night (of heart failure at age 71), the transformation he helped bring about in stand-up comedy had become so ingrained that it’s hard to think of Carlin as one of America’s most radical and courageous artists. But he was.

Say It Ain’t So: George Carlin Dies

How many TV news orgs will say the seven words?

George Carlin is dead, but his words live on. Especially his big seven from his monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” on the 1972 album Class Clown:

Shit

Piss

Fuck

Cunt

Cocksucker

Motherfucker

Tits

From the voice, a transcript of the routine:

I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I uh, I think is important. I love..as I say, they’re my work, they’re my play, they’re my passion. Words are all we have really.

We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid. You know, [humming]. And, then we assign a word to a thought, [clicks tongue]. And we’re stuck with that word for that thought. So be careful with words. I like to think, yeah, the same words that hurt can heal. It’s a matter of how you pick them.

There are some people that aren’t into all the words. There are some people who would have you not use certain words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They’d have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words. That’s what they told us they were, remember? ‘That’s a bad word.’ ‘Awwww.’ There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad Intentions.

And words, you know the seven don’t you? Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits, huh? Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that will infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits, wow. Tits doesn’t even belong on the list, you know. It’s such a friendly sounding word. It sounds like a nickname. ‘Hey, Tits, come here. Tits, meet Toots, Toots, Tits, Tits, Toots.’ It sounds like a snack doesn’t it? Yes, I know, it is, right. But I don’t mean the sexist snack, I mean, New Nabisco Tits. The new Cheese Tits, and Corn Tits and Pizza Tits, Sesame Tits Onion Tits, Tater Tits, Yeah. Betcha can’t eat just one. That’s true I usually switch off . But I mean that word does not belong on the list.

Actually, none of the words belong on the list, but you can understand why some of them are there. I am not completely insensitive to people’s feelings. You know, I can dig why some of those words got on the list…like cocksucker and motherfucker. Those are…those are heavy-weight words. There’s a lot going on there, man. Besides the literal translation and the emotional feeling. They’re just busy words. There’s a lot of syllables to contend with. And those K’s. Those are aggressive sounds, they jump out at you. CocksuckerMotherfuckerCocksucker. It’s like an assault, on you. So I can dig that.

And we mentioned shit earlier, of course. Two of the other 4-letter Anglo-Saxon words are Piss and Cunt, which go together of course. But forget about that. A little accidental humor there. Piss and Cunt. The reason Piss and Cunt are on the list is that a long time ago certain ladies said ‘Those are the two I am not going to say. I don’t mind Fuck and Shit, but P and C are out. P and C are out.’ Which led to such stupid sentences as ‘OK, you fuckers, I am going to tinkle now.’

And of course the word Fuck. The word Fuck, I don’t really…well, this is some more accidental humor, but I don’t really want to get into that now. Because I think it takes too long. But I do mean that. I mean, I think the word fuck is an important word. It’s the beginning of life, and, yet it’s a word we use to hurt one other, quite often. And uh, people much wiser than I have said, I’d rather have my son watch a film with two people making love than two people trying to kill one other. And I of course agree. I wish I know who said it first, and I agree with that. But I would like to take it a step further. I would like to substitute the word fuck, for the word kill in all those movie cliches we grew up with. ‘Okay Sheriff, we’re gonna fuck ya now. But we’re gonna fuck ya slow.’ So maybe next year I’ll have a whole fuckin’ rap on that word. I hope so.

Uh, there are two-way words, but those are the seven you can never say on television. Under any circumstances you just can not say them ever, ever ever, not even clinically. You can not weave them in the panel with Doc and Ed and Johnny, I mean it’s just impossible, forget those seven, they’re out.

But, there are some two-way words. There are double-meaning words. Remember the ones your giggled at in sixth grade? ‘And the cock crowed three times.”Hey, the cock the cock crowed three times. It’s in the bible.’ There are some Two-way words, like it’s okay for Curt Gowdy [mis-spelled in original transcription. -ed.] to say ‘Roberto Clemente has two balls on him.’ But he can’t say, ‘I think he hurt his balls on that play Tony, don’t you? He’s holding them. He must have hurt them by God.’ And the other two-way word that goes with that one is prick. It’s okay if it happens to your finger. Yes, you can prick your finger, but don’t finger your prick. No, no.

Capt. Kirk for President: Bring it on!

“Country I Love”

I’m Barack Obama. America is a country of strong families and strong values.

My life’s been blessed by both. I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents.

We didn’t have much money, but they taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up.

Accountability and self-reliance. Love of country. Working hard without making excuses. Treating your neighbor as you’d like to be treated.

It’s what guided me as I worked my way up — taking jobs and loans to make it through college. It’s what led me to pass up Wall Street jobs and go to Chicago instead, helping neighborhoods devastated when steel plants closed.

That’s why I passed laws moving people from welfare to work, cut taxes for working families and extended health care for wounded troops who’d been neglected.

I approved this message because I’ll never forget those values, and if I have the honor of taking the oath of office as president, it will be with a deep and abiding faith in the country I love.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — There’s new information about the hunt for a running mate for Barack Obama.

A member of the Congressional Black Caucus who’s met with Obama’s vice-presidential screening team says she offered the names of former senators John Edwards and Sam Nunn — and was told they’re on the list. Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Michigan says when she mentioned that Al Gore is her favorite, the two members of Obama’s team smiled.

Kilpatrick wouldn’t say which names Obama’s team brought up.

Lawmakers who’ve been briefed say there are about 20 names on the prospective vice-presidential list, which is said to include current elected officials, former elected officials, and retired military generals.

Compiled by Mary Grace Lucas

CNN Washington Bureau

AP: Williams to do `Meet the Press’ Sunday
Top NBC anchorman Brian Williams will host the next “Meet the Press” but the network hasn’t chosen who will permanently replace Tim Russert, an NBC News spokeswoman said Thursday.

Washington Post: McCain Raises Money the Hard Way
John McCain’s campaign treated the news of Barack Obama abandoning the public financing system with the expected disdain, calling it evidence that Obama is “just another typical politician who will do and say whatever is most expedient for Barack Obama.”

Chicago Tribune: Without public funding, sky’s the limit for Obama
‘Raising a half-billion dollars is a very realistic figure for him,’ strategist says.

NY Times: For Bush, a New Town, a New Disaster, but Always the Memory of New Orleans
Try as he might, President Bush cannot escape the haunting memory of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Bush toured flood-stricken areas here on Thursday, the latest in a string of disaster-zone visits he has made in his role as comforter in chief.

CNN: House approves war funding plan
Military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan would be funded into early 2009 under a compromise plan approved Thursday by the U.S. House.

Click to continue reading…

Alright. Look that word up today and it’ll have a picture of a two-headed monster named Tannin and Cioffi.

Don’t get me wrong: Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin are probably guilty of a lot more  than they’re being charged with here. But, are they the biggest crooks on Wall Street? Can anybody tell me what these two Bear Stearns executives did that thousands of Wall Streeters don’t do every single day and run merrily all the way the bank?

This arrest, with the requisite perp walk reminiscent of the stunts that old demagogue Rudy Giuliani used to pull, is simply to draw attention away from the crooked deal that U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson struck to get Bear Stearns into the hands of JP Morgan Chase.

The American people were left holding the bag in that deal.

The fact is we are surrounded by these thieves, including Mr. Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs, in government who preside over the wholesale looting of the American t\Treasury on behalf of the wealthy at the expense of poor and working class Americans.

People worry whether Barack Obama is an American and vote for people who then turn around and devastate the American way of life through crooked deals like the one Paulson cooked up here.

Who will tell the people? Will we hear? Better yet, what are we going to do about it?

Snoop with Willie Nelson. This is way too cool!

Alright, so I can’t say that I’m the most dedicated country music aficionado out there but this is, simply, the best and most effective country music song I’ve ever heard.

Snoop Dogg’s ‘My Medicine’ lyrics

Yeah
I Like to dedicate this record here
to my main man Johny Cash
A real American gangster
I got my nephew Whitey Ford on the guitar
Young Treb on the drums
Grand ol’ Opry
Here we come
Oh

Jack me nimble, jack me quick
jack of the spoon on the candlestick
don’t stay pimpin’ on the one trick only
yeah she kinda skinny but she gets my money

Ref:
Get my money
buy my medicine
buy my medicine
buy my medicine x2

Yeah
You know I’ve got to have that medicine
That prescription medicine baby
You know purple orange green

Jack starts hanging round with the fiends
Got strung out sold and count of beans
Told young wifey he got love your honey
But you gotta hit the streets
go and get my money

Ref x2

Yeah
The more dedicated the more medicated
Can you feel me?

Girl my love gonna last
just as long as my high

And I’m high
All day, everyday

You can trust every word
I’m gonna say will be a lie

Haha
Yeah, I lie sometimes

What’s the use of the truth
if you can’t get a lie sometimes baby
Now, dig this

Jack starts a track up and down a hill,
gotta walk and think “an ace what he told to Jill”
Come rain, come shine, come snow of a sunny
Get the f**k out girl and get my money

Ref x2

Yeah
They say you can’t buy me love
but you damn sure can buy me bud

Girl my love gonna last
just as long as my high

Oh, I’m so high right now
how about you?

You can trust every word
I’m gonna tell you is a lie

Liar, liar pants on fire

Girl, I love you
I love you though

That any baseball hall-of-fame that does not have Pete Rose in it is not worthy of the name . . .

That golf is not a sport (a game, maybe) and Tiger Woods, whatever he is, is not an athlete . . . but we talked all about that yesterday, exhausted the topic, actually.

The subject of golf does deserve at least one other mention, which is the inordinate amount space devoted to this useless pursuit.

I shared with some of you yesterday some of what George Carlin had to say about this so-called “sport.”

Here is more Carlin peroration on the topic, except, this time, he’s political:

“I’ve got just the place for low-cost housing. I have solved this problem.

I know where we can build housing for the homeless. Golf courses. Perfect!

Golf courses. Just what we need.

Plenty of good land, in nice neighborhoods, land that is currently being wasted on a meaningless, mindless activity engaged in primarily by white well-to-do male businessmen who use the game to get together to make deals to carve this country up a little finer among themselves.

I am getting tired, really getting tired of these golfing co–suckers in their green pants and their yellow pants and their orange pants and their precious little hats and their cute little golf carts.

It is time to reclaim the golf courses from the wealthy and turn them over to the homeless.

Golf is an arrogant, elitist game and it takes up entirely too much room in this country.

Too much room in this country.

It is an arrogant game on its design alone. Just the design of the game speaks of arrogance.

Think of how big a golf course is. The ball is that fu–ing big! What do these pinheaded pricks need with all that land?

There are over 17,000 golf courses in America. They average over 150 acres a piece.

That’s 3 million plus acres, 4,820 square miles.

You could build two Rhode Islands and a Delaware for the homeless on the land currently being wasted on this meaningless, mindless, arrogant, elitist, and racist, that’s another thing, the only blacks you’ll find in country clubs are carrying trays, and a boring game.

A boring game.

For boring people.

Ever watch golf on TV? It’s like watching flies fu- -.

And a mindless game. Mindless.

Think of the intellect it must take to draw pleasure from this activity.

Hitting a ball with a crooked stick and then, walking after it.

And then, hitting it again.

I say pick it up asshole you’re lucky you found the fu–ing thing.

Put in your pocket and go the fu– home. You’re a winner. You’re a winner. You found it.

No, never happen. No chance of that happening.

Dorko in the plaid knickers is going to hit again and walk some more.

Let these rich co–suckers play miniature golf!

Let them fu– with a windmill for an hour and half or so. See if there’s any real skill among these people.

Now, I know there are some people who play golf who don’t consider themselves rich.

I say F— ‘em!

And shame on them for engaging in an arrogant, elitist pastime.

–George Carlin, “Jammin’ In New York,” April 24 and 25, 1992 at the Paramount Theater in New York City (later a HBO special).

Robin Williams, too!

Then, finally, we come to golf.

Ever watch golf on TV? It’s like watching flies f–k.

I get more excited picking out socks.

Golf could be fun if you could play alone but it’s these genetic defectives that you have to hang around with that make it such a boring pastime.

Think of the brain that it takes to play golf. Hitting a ball with a crooked stick, then walking after it. And then, hitting it again.

I say pick it up ass—e. You’re lucky you found it. Put it in your pocket and go the f–k home, will ya.

I have to say that I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when Willie Randolph signed on to be manager of the Mets. Willie had worked so hard and strove so many years for an opportunity to manage, enduring endless interviews. When the opportunity came it was in New York and with the Mets, the team that seems to permanently have the word “hapless” appended to its name.

The reason for my trepidation for him is this: Bad things happen to people who go to the Mets, especially good people.

Do you know that the moment he was fired, he was no longer a member of the team and was, therefore, responsible for paying his hotel bill and for his flight back to New York? Not that Willie Randolph could not afford it, but they fired him in the middle of the night at the other end of the world. By e-mail at 3:17 a.m.

They could have fired him before the team left on this West Coast trip. New York’s voraciously racist sports press had been screaming for his head for months and had been on a death watch for weeks. Willie’s fate was especially acute by the week’s end.

So, why didn’t they fire him after the home series against Texas? Why let the man get on a plane, then fire him in the middle of the night? He could have cleaned out his locker and gone home.

The Mets is a low-class, bush league organization and the Wilpons are cowards.

Willie is class, a winner who was saddled with a team badly assembled by a master cover-your-own-ass general manager, Omar Minaya. They hired Willie, then Minaya cobbled together an over-the-hill gang of Latin players and a spoiled brat of a shortstop, Jose Reyes. Minaya consistently overrates and overvalues the team.

The reason they had “the collapse” last year was because they did not have the players. But they mistakenly thought that they had a good team and that they could win now. So they mortgaged the future of team to get Santana.

The problem for Willie now is that his Mets sojourn may have ruined his managerial career. He may never get another managerial post.

Let me put it this way: It’s not like he was being tackled as he hit the little white ball into the hole in the ground.

So, please, spare me the fist pumps and all the other histrionics. He may very well be a phenomenal, even a freak of a golfer. I’ll grant him that. He’s proven over these many years, since emerging as a prodigy, then dominating his field and his era so thoroughly, that he’s one of a kind. What exactly, I cannot say.

On top of that, he’s a very graceful and gentlemanly human being (at least appears to be; he probably kicks cats and dogs when no one is there to notice it).

What Mr. Woods is not is an athlete. And no amount of fist pumps and rebel yells will change that. I’m sorry to say this but a ping pong player is more of an athlete than Tiger will ever be.

Even rhythmic gymnastics and whatever abomination they conjure up at the Winter Olympics require more athletic ability than anything these layabouts do on a golf course. I also hate all the chemicals they put into the ground to get the grass to look so green. And I hate all that wasted space.

Having said all that, let me give Tiger Woods credit for one thing: the wardrobe. He has single-handedly changed the hideous style of dressing by men on the golf course. For that, and that alone, one can be thankful!

When I first read this I thought, surely, somebody’s got to be joking. I mean, it’s good of the former vice-president to make an endorsement when it would actually make a difference.

I’m tired, busy, and, did I mention tired? I don’t have time for Al Gore’s nonsense. Whoopty damn do!

I don’t want to hear anything more about Gore possibly being on the ticket.

I don’t care who wants it. Not gonna happen.

1. NBA. I’m thinking beyond the hurt and pain to ninja-like revenge for the absolute extension of corporate corruption to (no surprise) the anti-trust-exempted NBA.

I’ve been trying to think back, through my well-known cynicism, to all the unexpected extensions of conference and final playoffs.

Back then, during slow moments in the action, my twisted mind would think about the irony of the best interest of the league’s front office (in terms of the extra gorge of TV exposure and revenue) for each series to run six or seven games.

My pre-lawyer mind even imagined the TV contract clauses paying out less for shorter series, and Lawrence O’Brien and David Stern and their lackeys sweating bullets (as in Baltimore) over the lost millions in sweeps and 4-1 series, and conspiring tpo “fix” the problem.”

Apparently, they tried (and succeeded, til now).
To think I once had (completely unrealistic and misplaced) dreams of playing for this bunch.

2. NASCAR: the Good Ole Boys take a page out of the Sista v. Knicks playbook.

Did you hear that a black woman sued NASCAR for racial and gender discrimination? She says when she complained, NASCAR brass told her to “get over it.”

I hope she does get over (it), to the tune of the $225 million she’s suing them for.

It’s the yellow flag for them, and the checkered flag for her!
King

Va. governor could help fill gap for Obama: Centrist seen as dark horse among VP possibilities By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff, June 12, 2008

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - He is the popular governor of a critical swing state. He has working-class roots and a Harvard degree, and strong support from both business and labor. He is a devout Catholic and speaks fluent Spanish, and was the first governor outside Illinois to endorse Barack Obama for president.

Governor Tim Kaine is probably the least well known of the trio of rising Democratic stars from Virginia. The others - US Senator Jim Webb, the flame-throwing author and former Navy secretary, and former governor Mark Warner, the wealthy venture capitalist who briefly flirted with a presidential run - are regularly listed as vice presidential possibilities.

But Kaine’s biography and political resume fill many of the perceived gaps in Obama’s profile, making him for some analysts a dark horse in veepstakes 2008.

“The case for him is Virginia is a competitive state this time around, and he is kind of a centrist,” said Dan Palazzolo, a political scientist at the University of Richmond. “He’s prolife, basically, and he’s got this probusiness background. He’s also a big supporter of Obama.”

But, as Palazzolo notes, Kaine has no military or foreign policy experience, credentials Obama also lacks and that could prove a detriment for Republican John McCain, a Navy veteran and former prisoner of war who has traveled extensively around the world during his 22 years in the US Senate. “I think they’re substantial downsides,” Palazzolo said.

Obama, though, clearly has warm feelings for Kaine, who befriended the Illinois senator when he came to Virginia to stump for Kaine in 2005. (They discovered that their mothers came from the same small town in Kansas.) Campaigning in Virginia last week, Obama appeared with all three of Virginia’s Democratic notables, but he reserved special affection for Kaine.

“When you’re in the political business, there are a lot of people who are your allies, there are a lot of people who you’ve got to do business with, but you don’t always have a lot of friends,” Obama said at a rally, according to the Washington Post’s Virginia Politics blog. “The governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia is my friend.”

Click to continue reading…

Pig in Boots: The world’s only porker who is afraid of mud By Beth Hale, June 10, 2008

You can’t get much happier than a pig in muck, or so we are told.

But when this little piggy arrived in the farmyard she showed a marked reluctance to get her trotters dirty.

While her six brothers and sisters messed around in the mire, she stayed on the edge shaking. It is thought she might have mysophobia - a fear of dirt.

Owners Debbie and Andrew Keeble were at a loss, until they remembered the four miniature wellies used as pen and pencil holders in their office. They slipped them on the piglet’s feet - and into the mud she happily ploughed.

Now she runs over to Mr Keeble so he can put them on for her in the morning.

The couple, who run the award-winning Debbie and Andrew’s sausage company in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, named the young saddleback Cinders after Cinderella and her magical glass slippers.

They are using her to front a campaign to give a better deal to pig farmers.

Fortunately for five-week-old Cinders, she will not end up in one of their sausages. Although they were pig farmers for 20 years, the Keebles keep them only as pets nowadays.

‘I don’t know what will happen as she gets bigger,’ said Mr Keeble.

‘Hopefully she will grow out of her phobia of mud before she needs a new set of boots.’