OPINION

Riddle me this Batman, what does John McCain stand to gain from daily complaints that the press is treating him unfarily? Especially when McCain provides the boring backdrops and no news.

Like today.

Obama speaks to thousands in Germany.
McCain speaks at a German restaurant in Ohio.

What's up with the Baylor Board of Regents sending President John Lilley packing only two and a half years into his contract? The Regents are saying that Lilley couldn't unite the faculty behind his leadership. I checked with one of my Baylor sources, who writes:

I think it means that the Board has decided to lead. It's significant that they did not do this the old Baylor way, which is for everyone to walk out with smiley faces and saying how great everyone is and that the vote was unanimous. No, this was pretty un-Baylor. Lilley was hit with as blunt an instrument as he has hit others.

"I have a confession to make," says my wife, on the other end of the line. "We have a chick."

"What?"

"We have a baby chicken."

She got a chick. I knew it. I just knew she was going to do this! She's been lusting after chickens for a long time, and after she went to Joanna's place and met her brood, I knew it was just a matter of time.

Fine. I ain't cleaning up the [barnyard epithet]. But I will eat the aigs.

That's how Obama's Berlin speech struck me: gassy, kitchen-sink, internationalist, sentimentalist cliches. I'm all for better relations with Europe, and putting the Bush approach behind us, but this was pretty thin gruel. I liked it better the first time I heard it; at least it was set to music, and only lasted three minutes.

Today's topic of the day is easy. What'd you think of what Obama said in Berlin?

The official story is that Hurrican Dolly, some 1,000 miles away, forced McCain to cancel his trip to New Orleans today. Good thing he did. The storm is over Laredo now. Imagine the impact that is having on the offshore oil rig McCain wanted to visit near New Orleans.

So what really happened? From reports on this blog and other news outlets, this seems to be the chain of events: McCain and others say they may announce a VP choice this week. They announce the trip to meet with Jindal in New Orleans. Then, abruptly, Jindal takes his name out of consideration on Tuesday, and aides start talking up Romney, and McCain says no final decision has been made yet.

Was the plan to steal headlines from Obama by deception? Or was the plan to steal headlines from Obama by announcing the VP choice today in New Orleans? And if No. 2 is it, what happened? And how will Romney or someone else feel about being the No. 2 choice for No. 2?

Here's what the Washington Post had to say in its editorial about Barack's Iraq visit. The Post concluded that "...it seems worthwhile to point out that, by Mr. Obama's own account, neither U.S. commanders nor Iraq's principal political leaders actually support his strategy."

The Post also called his strategic policy vision "eccentric." Here's the last paragraph:

Mr. Obama's account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is "the central front" for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

I hope we think about this as we debate what to write for tomorrow's pages about Obama's speech. The wow factor isn't what's important. What's important are the effects of his policies.

I don't have any doubt that Barack Obama will wow us with his speech in Berlin. One of his greatest strengths is his abilty to communicate. He did that marvelously at the 2004 Democratic convention, he staved off critics this spring with his Rev. Wright speech and he wove a compelling narrative into most of his primary night speeches.

But I'm less interested in how he comes across today than I am with the effect of his policies. Are his ideas about Iraq/Iran/the Mideast going to get us to where we need to go?

I blogged last week about the Washington Post reporting how some Europeans are nervous that Obama's talk-without-conditions-with-Iran would undercut their push to get the Iranians to stop enriching uranium. I kind of wonder if we saw some of their fears coming true last weekend when Iran walked away from talks with the EU and us about their enrichment work.

Maybe it was a cat-mouse move and they'll come back later this year. I hope so. But maybe the Iranians are looking at our election and thinking they could be dealing soon with a new American president who's taking a different approach than Europe on their nuke program.

That's just one example of how his policies need careful examination. The New York Times also reported last week how middle-class Iraqis, who like Obama, are worried Obama's Iraq policy "could lead to chaos in a nation already devastated by war."

Again, I expect a great speech. But where will his words take us?

Obama's hoping that speaking before thousands of Germans today will reflect well on him back home. Hasn't worked for David Hasselhof, but whatever. And apparently, his plan was to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, but that has been blocked. Wonder why.

But no matter what, this is a major speech abroad. He needs to seem staesmanlike. He needs to avoid harsh criticism of a sitting president. And he needs a signature line. Some of the pressure's off by not speaking at the site of the Berlin Wall, but he needs something like a "Mr. Gorbechev, Tear Down This Wall" or an "Ich bin ein Berliner."

So, for fun, what do you propose his sound byte of the day should be? Me, I'm hoping for Hope We Can. Or Yes We Hope. Or ...

Is is my imagination, or has Barack Obama gotten significantly grayer in the past few months? The photo on the left is from his trip yesterday in the Middle East. The one on the right was from a speech he made in April.

Is it possibly he's being "grayed-up" to make him look older? Kind of a reverse Grecian Formula.

This story is up on our site now. A Rhode Island man had a blood alcohol level of.491. That's more than six times the legal limit. I wanted to post some comment about prohibition just to get the folks commenting on my drug posting yesterday all riled up. Sadly, I can think of nothing. I am just amazed that someone can have a blood-alcohol level that's that high.
The headline says that this is a new state record in Rhode Island so maybe I should just offer my congratulations.

Poor Elephant Jenny. Bubba says she looked miserable on Saturday when he and his daughter stopped by to say goodbye. He asked a zookeeper why she seemed so darn hot, as she was being constantly showered with a hose. It must be hot for elephants in Africa. It's a dry heat, he was told. Oh.

The deck headline on today's lead editorial reads: "Sunnyvale case reminds that no bullying is OK."

And the editorial includes a quotation paraphrased from a news story about the Sunnyvale bullying experience: "School officials said their initial investigation didn't turn up anything beyond normal bullying." Thus, the topic of the day: What is bullying, and what can we do to stop it?

I submit that there is bullying in childhood -- and bullying in adulthood. There are programs for schools to use to prevent childhood bullying, and these should be implemented in our schools. The question is whether it's too late to stop bullies if you wait for them to grow to school age? When I substituted on a more-or-less regular basis in an elementary-school-level alternative education class (that's the one for children who don't fit in the regular classroom because of unacceptable behavior), the students attended informal classes on how to treat other people. How sad that schools have to explicitly address this subject. So that's one point to address.

And what happens to school-age bullies? Do they grow into adult bullies? Let's talk about some ways that adults bully children and other adults ...

If there were a Points blog, here are some of the things I'd be posting about:

First, check out this transcript of a Q&A between On the Media's Brooke Gladstone and Wired editor Chris Anderson. Anderson wrote a piece for Wired on how the Internet could be making the scientific method obsolete. I'm fascinated by this -- the idea that petabyte-scale computing will allow people to notice correlations in data without being able to explain causation.

Do you think America's on the verge of a permanent energy shortage that will radically change our way of life?

Or do you think gloom-and-doomers are exaggerating the threat, selling short our ability to innovate and adapt?

No matter which side of the peak-oil debate you're on, I hope you'll join us as we launch our second annual Points Summer Book Club on Aug. 3.

We'll be reading James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency," which is out on paperback. In this controversial book, he forecasts hard times ahead, with the end of cheap and plentiful oil. (Careful Points readers may remember his work. We published an excerpt of this book when it came out in 2005. We also ran an essay from him in June, "Driving toward disaster."

Blog reader Jeffrey Brown will be one of our discussion leaders -- along with Rod Dreher, Tod Robberson and freelance writer Trey Garrison -- and I think other readers of this blog will find the two-week-long discussion especially thought-provoking.

Also, mark your calendars on Aug. 17. That afternoon, we'll wrap up the discussion with an in-person book club blog meet-up. (Peterk, I believe you've said you'll be in town then, no?)

I'll post more details here as we firm them up. But I wanted to give you all an heads-up so you can start reading the book.

My alma mater, the University of Kansas, wants to make sure that this message is understood: KU has not endorsed Barack Obama. Just so we're clear: no endorsement.

Administrators are feeling angst after the Young Democrats on campus printed up T-shirts that play off of KU's strange-but-fabulous "Rock Chalk" chant. For those of us who are loyal to the crimson and blue, Rock Chalk Jayhawk shirts are standard-issue game day attire.

The Young Democrats thought it would be fun to change that to "Barack Chalk Jayhawk." Clever, right? Kansas Gov. and rumored VP contender Kathleen Sebelius thought so. And she posed for a photo with the shirt.

That prompted much scurrying and clarifying in the ranks of university officialdom. Statements were issued. Pledges of neutrality were reiterated. Needless to say, there will be no more Barack Chalk Jayhawk. So much for fun shirts.

Why, it's Jenny the elephant! (Who also happens to be todays (belated) topic of the day!)

The editorial board met with PETA last week so that the group could present its argument for keeping Jenny in the states and moving her to The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn. The Dallas Zoo wants to move Jenny to a drive-through zoo in Puebla, Mexico, called Africam Safari Park.

And then along comes City Council member Angela Hunt, who, as Steve Blow details in his column today, traveled 3,000 between the park in Mexico and the sanctuary in Tennessee. She recommends that the city override the zoo's plans to move Jenny to the zoo in Mexico.

The editorial board hasn't weighed in on Jenny's future move, so I'd like to just see, individually, where our staff members stand on the issue now that everyone has had the opportunity to review the very thorough story by Joanna Cattanach (no relation, but her name does have a certain ring to it).

Should the city stay out of it and let Jenny go to Africam Safari Park, or should they listen to PETA, Ms. Hunt and the gazillion people across the U.S. that have sent me form letters on the issue?

We had Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform in for an interview yesterday. He's almost without parallel in the conservative movement because of the weekly D.C. meeting he hosts for representatives from the movement to talk issues and strategy. He had this to say about the election:

He thought five issues would get various elements of the conservative movement to the polls to vote McCain. The Arizonan has never been the movement's darling, but Norquist thought conservatives saw him as a bulwark against Obama and the Democrats when it came to:

1. Maintaining gun rights
2. Protecting the home school movement
3. Keeping Democrats from changing the Fairness Doctrine in a way that would limit talk radio hosts
4. Keeping tax rates low on capital gains and dividends so the 66 percent of Americans who own stock won't get hurt by higher taxes on their investments
5. Stopping labor from choking businesses.

What really surprised me was when I asked him whether those issues were sufficient to get movement conservatives to vote McCain, even if he doesn't select a veep from their part of the party. He said, yes, they were important enough on their own and acknowledged that the movement wouldn't need a conservative veep to get them to vote.

I was surprised because McCain seems under pressure to find a conservative to make amends with the movement. If Norquist is right, then McCain is really free to pick someone different, which I think he should.

All along, I've thought McCain needs to scramble the equation of this race and find a veep out of the ordinary who can win independents and even Democrats in swing states. I've had in mind Carly Fiorini, the former Hewlett-Packard exec, but it doesn't have to be her. Just someone like her who's not a conventional pick and who could bring some surprising votes to McCain's side, like Hillary's working class women.

As Norquist left, I said I also had been thinking McCain should find a Latino CEO as his running mate. He agreed, saying the party's future is Hispanic.

All in all, his veep thinking wasn't what I expected. If he's shooting straight, this really frees up McCain to go for a veep who is not straight out of the conservative movement.

I can't post video in the comments, so I'm responding to Colleen's question below in a new thread.

Jon Stewart, as usual, really hit the nail on the head last night when he asked: "When you woke up this morning, did you feel a little colder? Like the country was a little sadder, a little lonelier, a little less hopeful? There's a reason for that. ..."

It gets better from there:

A question or assertion that letter writers often make is that we won't print their letter because the opinions they express disagree with an editorial. In reality, we often print letters that disagree with the paper's insitutional opinion, so readers shouldn't hold back a letter just because they disagree with the board.

Case in point: Today we printed a letter from Dr. Elizabeth Whelan of the American Council on Science and Health. She didn't agree with an editorial's characterization of her organization or with the main point of the editorial.

If you think that we won't print it because you don't see eye-to-eye with the editorial board, chances are you're just right for the Letters page after all.

A recent episode of "This American Life" was built around the idea that a little information can be a dangerous thing.

My favorite was the discussion of "children who get a mistaken idea in their heads about how something works or what something means, and then don't figure out until well into adulthood that they were wrong."

There was the case of the man who had assumed when he was young that Nielsen families all actually had the last name Nielsen. He worked it out logically -- that even thought that's not how polls worked today, they must have f