DEAR SENATOR OBAMA: Join my church.

THE WASHINGTON POST: The Iraqi Upturn: Don’t look now, but the U.S.-backed government and army may be winning the war. “Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained ‘special groups’ that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. . . . When Mr. Obama floated his strategy for Iraq last year, the United States appeared doomed to defeat. Now he needs a plan for success.” Do tell.

BLACK BLOGGERS FIGHT TO MAKE VOICES HEARD:

With its power-to-the-individual approach, the new media world promises anyone with a laptop the possibility of a publishing empire. But, as some black bloggers are finding out, the new media world is a lot like the old one: racially segregated, with many prominent black voices still fighting to be heard.

Some bloggers felt insulted this month when the Democratic National Committee selected 55 state-oriented blogs to cover its convention in Denver; critics said few featured African American voices. The DNC said race wasn’t considered in its selection from 400 applicants. Officials were more interested in the sites’ audience size and how much chatter about local issues appeared on them. The DNC answered critics Thursday by adding several sites led by African Americans to its general blogger pool.

But some critics say the DNC situation is indicative of a larger media divide. . . . That coverage gap is partly what inspired Gina McCauley to help organize the first Blogging While Brown conference this summer in Atlanta. The most popular online community conferences – like the Netroots Nation confab that grew out of the Daily Kos blog – tend to be predominantly white gatherings.

“The progressive blogosphere is segregated,” said McCauley, whose What About Our Daughters blog was accepted to the DNC’s blogger pool. Essence magazine named McCauley one of its 25 most influential people last year alongside Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and filmmaker Tyler Perry. “Black bloggers link to other black bloggers, and progressive white bloggers link to other white progressive bloggers,” she said.

Read the whole thing.

UH OH:

As the votes on the agreements were taken, one woman, wearing a blue “Team Hillary” shirt, shoved a man in a suit and tie wearing a small Obama button on his lapel. Another woman in a white Clinton shirt hung her head in her hands.

“That was a crime!” a man shouted.

“McCain in ’08! McCain in ’08!” a woman yelled from the back of the room. “No-bama! No-bama!”

Hey, we’ve been yelling “No-bama!” in Tennessee for years. . . . Plus, video here.

UPDATE: Violence against women!

SO WHY — AFTER FAILING TO DO SO WHEN IT WOULD HAVE DONE HIM THE MOST GOOD — did Obama decide to quit the Trinity Church now? Larry Johnson says that another shoe is about to drop. Hmm. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Related item here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Also here.

AMERICAN POLITICS: Infested with haters?

WORKING AGAIN ON ocean thermal power systems.

DUDE, WHERE’S MY RECESSION? (CONT’D): “Given that the economy is flagging, this would seem an inauspicious time to be graduating from college and looking for full-time employment. Job prospects this year, however, have been better than career counselors and recent graduates had expected. . . . Preliminary surveys conducted by university and college career counselors indicate that the percentage of students who had found jobs by graduation was about the same as last year.” Okay, it’s not all rosy, but it’s not exactly the economic wasteland we’ve been hearing about.

DALE AMON sends this picture from my panel. The lighting wasn’t as dramatic as last year, but the backdrop was more impressive.

OUCH: “What Obama did today may have been politically necessary. It was certainly politically expedient. And it is yet one more blow to Obama’s image as a different kind of politician. In fact, as we’ve learned over the last few months, Obama appears to be a Chicago politician through and through.”

ALCEE HASTINGS will boycott the Democratic Convention over Florida.

POLITICO: Bill Clinton’s enemies list.

LISTENING IN on a McCain press conference call. “What was striking about the call was how eager the conventional reporters were to lend the Obama campaign a hand.” Somebody should put the audio of these calls online.

AN ARMY OF CHANGS: China’s Cyber Militias.

MORE ON OBAMA QUITTING Trinity, here.

UPDATE: Liveblogging the Obama press conference: “I will not denounce the church. It is not a church worthy of denouncing.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: I just remembered — this afternoon I saw some idiot on CNN talking about how Obama had weathered the “dstractions” relating to the Trinity Church with consummate skill. Not so much.

BOY, JUST POST A picture of Matthew Yglesias and the robophobia appears. (“Though perhaps we’ll all be thinking whatever our robot overlords tell us by then.”) The Yglesias reference is like a dog-whistle for the robophobes, I guess . . . .

OUCH: Europe ‘needs 75 years’ to catch US.

The Association of European Chambers of Commerce in Brussels warned that the transatlantic gap had widened yet further in the past five years by all key measures, despite the pledge by EU leaders at the 2000 Lisbon summit to transform Europe into the world’s “most dynamic knowledge-based economy” by the end of the decade.

The EU-wide umbrella group, known asEurochambres said the EU’s overall employment rate was still stuck at levels attained by the United States in 1978, chiefly due to an incentive structure that discourages women from working and prompts early retirement by those in their fifties.

It found that the European Union’s research and development levels were achieved by America as long ago as 1979, while the lag time on per capita income is 18 years.

“It will take the EU until 2072 to reach US levels of income per capita, and then only if the EU income growth exceeds that of the US by 0.5pc,” the study said.

I don’t think that regulating country line dancing is moving them forward any. . . . They’re way ahead of us on perks for bureaucrats already, though. And that’s saying something!

A LITTLE LATE: CNN is reporting that Obama has resigned his membership in the Trinity Church.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ REVIEWS Austin Bay’s Arena Academy.

MCCAIN and the bloggers. Plus, some questions.

A NEW Naomi Novik book — and Peter Jackson has acquired the film rights to the series, which sounds promising.

A CLINTON HURRICANE strikes the DNC.

Much more here.

UPDATE: Uh oh: “Koryne Horbal says she and other feminists are promising action that could hurt Obama’s candidacy if the disputed Florida and Michigan delegations are not fully seated at the Democratic National Convention. If Obama becomes the nominee under those circumstances, Horbal says she and others will write-in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name on the ballot in November instead of voting for Obama.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Much more here, including video.

MORE: Just noticed that TalkLeft has been all over this. Plus, it’s pledge week there.

I’M SITTING IN on the Google Lunar X-Prize session, where several of the contestants are talking about their efforts. Interestingly, everybody so far has said they’re planning to establish a long-term lunar business, rather than just undertaking a one-shot effort to win the prize. That’s quite cool, since it holds out the prospect of many competitors continuing their efforts even if someone else wins the prize, thus — as prizes are wont to do — generating a lot of leverage out of the prize money.

There are now 14 competitors registered, from the United States, Romania, Italy, the Isle of Man, and Malaysia. It sounds like they expect more. Of course, they’ve lost Cringely.

UPDATE: Best line from one of the contestants: “Space is hard.”

JOHN ADAMS must be smiling in heaven.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg emails a link to this related post, which even has a space angle.

THEY JUST SHOWED A PICTURE from the Mars Phoenix lander, showing ice.

UPDATE: Here’s the image, and a release. Call it possible ice.