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.

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

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.

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.