NO BOUNCE: Post-Biden Poll Shows Dead Heat.

OOPS: “A son and a brother of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) are accused in two lawsuits of defrauding a former business partner and an investor of millions of dollars in a hedge fund deal that went sour, court records show.” Hard to tell if there’s anything to this or not. Presumably, the Obama vetters think not.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: IF HE’D FIGURED THIS OUT FIVE YEARS AGO — or even three years ago, when PorkBusters started — the G.O.P. might still be a majority party. Trent Lott on pork-barrel spending:

Lott was known as one of the “Princes of Pork” while he was in Congress for his ability to bring home the bacon to Mississippi and he said that also caused some friction with McCain. . . .

Then Lott made a couple of admissions I found startling.

“But you know what, in my heart I knew he was right,” he said of his pork barrel ways. That’s no way to do business, we shouldn’t be doing all that earmarking — it got completely out of control.

“It got out of control with Republicans and that’s why we are being punished a little bit,” he added. “Because we forgot how we got there, what we believed in, the principles that after 30 years put us in the majority, gave us the White House, the congress, the senate, the house. And then we ran out of ideas… “

You don’t say.

SEXISM IN THE MEDIA: From “teenaged boys are stupid” to “If the Boss is Young and Male, Watch Out.” It’s because of the hormones!

SOME DNC FUN: LGF, PJ Media, Zombie Team Up for Convention Coverage.

UPDATE: Video and more, at Gateway Pundit.

VIDEO: A cinematic trailer for the new World of Warcraft.

A LOOK AT the Olympic sport of badminton.

UPDATE: Yes, this is my second mention of badminton in a week after never mentioning it in over six years of blogging. Go figure.

MATTHEW ENGEL — no doubt still smarting from the righteous Fisking James Lileks applied to his lamely patronizing Olive Garden piece years ago — now repeats his performance in a lower and more obnoxious register with regard to U.S. Olympic athletes. Keep it up, Matt — maybe someday, someone somewhere will be impressed.

VIDEO: Protesters in Denver.

MORE ON THE BARACK OBAMA / BILL AYERS / ANNENBERG AFFAIR.

Plus this: “They told Glenn Reynolds that if Bush were re-elected no library user would have any privacy. And they were right!” They often are, it seems . . . .

A “CUNNING LINGUIST” at the Los Angeles Times. Also, could you please page a Mr. Dick Hertz?

THOUGHTS ON Biden, Haditha, and duty, from John Weidner.

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: “Sen. Barack Obama’s wife and three close advisers have been involved with a program at the University of Chicago Medical Center that steers patients who don’t have private insurance — primarily poor, black people — to other health care facilities.” I’m not sure the program is actually a bad idea when you read the details, but if a Republican did it, it would be evidence of cruel, racist, capitalism.

Plus, it does seem a bit incestuous:

Obama’s top political strategist, David Axelrod, co-owns the firm, ASK Public Strategies, that was hired by the hospital last year to sell the program — called the Urban Health Initiative — to the community as a better alternative for poor patients. Obama’s wife and Valerie Jarrett, an Obama friend and adviser who chairs the medical center’s board, backed the Axelrod firm’s hiring, hospital officials said.

Another Obama adviser and close friend, Dr. Eric Whitaker, took over the Urban Health Initiative when he was hired at U. of C. in October 2007. . . . Axelrod’s firm also suggested the program’s name be changed. “Some participants view the word ‘urban’ as code for ‘black,’ ” according to a poll the firm commissioned.

Read the whole thing — since it’s probably the only major press report of this affair that you’ll see . . . .

THE JOYS OF backyard blimps.

MORE DEVELOPMENTS IN SOLAR POWER.

GOOD NEWS ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT: “According to a study by the Desert Research Institute, pollutant levels at the beginning of the 20th century were two to five times higher than current levels of pollution.”

THE KID AND THE GRANDPA: “Obama was 11 when Biden entered Congress. I guess they’re going fishin’ together. . . . Is this race already being framed Biden vs. McCain? That would be a big oops!”

MORE THOUGHTS ON RUSSIA AND GEORGIA, from Prof Kenneth Anderson. “I share unreservedly the belief that Russia is deliberately undertaking a dangerous, threatening, imperial expansion in the “near abroad” and that it must be opposed and rolled back. . . . It is a grave error to conflate rolling back Russian expansionism with the idea that Georgia should have actual political, security, and military control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This is a difficult point, but it is essential. My view, based on what I saw in the brutal, unforgiving, as-bad-as-Yugoslavia ethnic cleansing wars of fifteen years ago, is that it is simply impossible for Georgia to govern those territories.”

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Eugene Volokh, who comments: “But while my instinctive sense in the Russian-Georgian conflict is that the Russians are in the wrong, I think it’s important not to assume that therefore the Georgians are in the right, or ought to get what they want. And my sense is that the talk of letting Georgia into NATO is likely quite misguided.” It’s not a good idea to let Georgia into NATO unless we’re willing to get into a shooting war with Russian on Georgia’s behalf. I don’t believe that we are, and I’m sure that the rest of NATO isn’t.

WHY YOU SHOULD call your doctor for test results. Yeah, you tend to assume that no news is good news, but sometimes it just means somebody forgot to call.

“DIGITAL BROWNSHIRTS” threaten Ron Fournier. Thou shalt not criticize the Messiah!

PROPERTY RIGHTS AS “the poor relation” of constitutional law.

THE FUN BEGINS: Anti-war protests in Denver, featuring Cindy Sheehan. Though at this late date, what war are they protesting, exactly? Iraq’s in the wrap-up phase (even Obama says the Surge worked and, well, “mission accomplished”), even the lefties haven’t been raising much complaint about Afghanistan, and nobody’s talking about invading Iran or anything. If you want a real invasion over oil to protest, you could march against the Russian invasion of Georgia, but that’s not happening. What’s next — protests against Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba?

TYLER COWEN ON THE REAL ESTATE MESS: “The fundamental problem in the American economy is that, for years, people treated rising asset prices as a substitute for personal savings.”

FAY’S FLOODING AND MORE, from Brendan Loy. It’s cloudy here, but so far none of that Fay-rain has materialized. We’d like some, and folks further south would be happy to spare it, I think.

WAITING UNTIL OBAMA IS “safely nominated?” Well, possibly, though it’s interesting to see the Hillary diehards investing so much faith in GOP operatives.