Vice President Dick Cheney is currently on a diplomatic tour of the Middle East, and earlier today, at the Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, a suicide bomber made it through one security gate before detonating. The attack happened far from Cheney and he wasn't harmed, but a number of NATO soldiers were hurt or killed along with some Afghani truck drivers. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has proposed free vaccinations for girls aged 9-18 against HPV. The difference between his plan and Perry's is that Patrick's vaccination isn't mandatory.

President Bush has a history of not knowing when to say when. Despite his remaining clean and sober for years, the President currently struggles with a new addiction: Iraq.

There is a ton of news this morning; seemingly everyone was waiting for the next cycle to begin before they started making announcements about big, important things — important things like TXU's sale to a group of private equity firms, for example. The deal promises to cut rates and coal plants, while increasing access to alternative energy sources. It is hard to believe that such a quick change was possible, but perhaps the coal plants deal was proving to be more trouble that it was worth.

There's a deal being hashed out for some private firms to buy TXU, the current bad guys on the Texas environmental scene who would really, really like to build eleven coal plants and do it fast. If the $45 billion buyout happens, the new private equity firms that would take over TXU would do away with plans for eight of those eleven plants and undertake some serious environmental policy revision.

This week I talked with Thure Cannon, Chief of Staff for State Representative David Farabee.

If you're headed out to the Denton County Democratic Party's annual Chili Supper tonight, I'll see you there. I'll be speaking briefly about The Texas Blue.

The main attraction will be Lisa Turner, from the excellent Texas Values In Action Coalition, who will be discussing the recent Democratic advances in Dallas and Tarrant counties. Feel free to say "Hello" if you get the chance.

4:00 pm - from the Editor
I caught the last part of the speech on the live feed, and the crowd really was substantial and energetic.
It seems like the speech was well-received, and of course Obama is a dynamic speaker. He stumbled on a few of the stump standards (I've been in Washington long enough...) but his overall message of hope and change went oveer well.

Katie's liveblog is available in its entirety within. She had to do most of it from a Blackberry, and she did a great job. - Josh

3:54
Obama's speech ends with an anecdote and then he fires up the crowd one last time.

Then he starts to move through the crowd, shaking hands and greeting supporters.

By the end, the crowd was very very large.

From campaign sources: Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack will drop his bid for the Democratic nomination. The overwhelming reason and factor seems to be money — everyone else has a ton, but Vilsack may have had difficulty in getting enough together stay in, or maintain his industrious campaign schedule. Bayh's out, Vilsack is out. Any ideas on who will be next?

The Texas Republican Party announced plans to hold a presidential straw poll over Labor Day weekend in Fort Worth, Texas. It expects up to 20,000 people to show up, which seems like an awful lot of hubbub over an essentially unexciting group of candidates. The state organization, however, has something more complicated in mind.