Barack Obama is on the cover of Rolling Stone again! So soon after the last one. And just one week after he showed up on the front of publisher Jann Wenner's UsWeekly! In fact, if you have a magazine, you have probably put Barack Obama on the cover. It's summer, so nothing is really going on besides Batman and this Barack Obama character. Does anyone without a pair of breasts sell so many magazines? Did our prettiest president even get this much ink until he tragically died? Attached, a composite of the media maelstrom. (The Tiger Beat one, sadly, is from The Onion. It was our favorite too.)

If you're running for office, you really want your communiciations director to be at least respected by the journalists it is his or her job to manage. Hillary Clinton's flack was the oft-sweatered Howard Wolfson, who, it turns out now, was universally reviled. We already told you about how Vogue's Julia Reed called Wolfson "the most charmless human being on the planet." But Reed was not the only one who announced her hatred for Wolfson after the campaign ended! The Economist, while often subtly snide, is rarely so openly hostile as they were in their recent obit for the Clinton campaign:

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson is fighting the Obama campaign's effort to win the evangelical Christian vote. The fiercely pro-life author and speaker rebutted Obama's "fruitcake interpretation" of the Bible on his radio show today. Apparently back in 2006, Obama gave a speech to a liberal Christian group pointing out Old Testament Hebrew laws, to highlight the problem with legislating according to the Bible. In fact, that speech sounds a lot like this clip from the West Wing, the show about fictional awesome president Martin Sheen that helped so many liberals endure the first Bush term:

This month's Fortune presents two dueling covers—John McCain and Barack Obama both promising to fix the economy. It's cute! John McCain says the greatest threat to our economy is terrorism, obviously. ("Terrorism" means "secret Muslim president.") But McCain, while he doesn't understand anything about economics, has a cunning plan to fix the current crises: allow Barack Obama to win and inherit a situation so dismal that there's next-to-nothing he can do, then allow McCain's party to reap the benefits of total collapse a few generation later. Cunning! [Animal]

Members of the staffs of John McCain and Barack Obama are holding an official debate on Twitter, presumably to attract the Tech-savvy Urban Early Adopter Influencer Creatives who have been almost entirely committed to Barack Obama since before the primaries. Mike Nelson (an "outside adviser" to Obama) and Liz Mair (the RNC online communications director) are fielding questions about their candidates with 140-character answers. But as one blogger said, "Conducting a debate via Twitter seems like a depressing acknowledgment that the soundbite is now the fundamental unit of American political discourse." CNN reported on the stunt in the clip shown below (though they get the dates wrong and say moderator Ana Marie Cox started Gawker, when in fact she edited the D.C. blog Wonkette).

Barack Obama talked to some governors about the economy Friday but all anyone really paid attention to was the weird pseudo-presidential seal on his podium. It is the eagle from the real-life presidential seal, holding arrows and an olive branch, but it says "Obama for America" on it and he replaced our country's Latin motto with "Yes We Can." So he's obviously un-patriotic, or arrogant, or something? It's going to be a big stupid issue. But even if it was just a bit of fun, we think it was clever. Because yes while everyone castigates the dude for pretending he's already the president, the news will show photos of him standing at that podium with that seal over and over again, making him look really presidential. Also it will remind people of how awesome the Ramones were. Now he'll be thrown in jail, just like they were. (An awesome YouTube video about this is after the jump.)

Michelle Obama, loving and chronically sarcastic wife to presidential candidate Barack Obama, is co-hosting lady show The View today. She opened by terrorist fist-jabbing all her co-hosts! She is smart and funny and friendly and regular, and none of that will stop people from calling her a constantly aggrieved radical or whatever. Though between today's hosting duty and her US Weekly cover, she's obviously on a charm offensive. For the first time in our adult life, we're proud of daytime television and tabloid magazines.

Remember when John McCain called his wife the worst possible word? Not enough! But that's solved with this sketch from the same YouTube comedy group that made john.he.is, a clever and popular parody of will.i.am's "Yes We Can." In the sketch, a TV news team argues about whether to publicize that the Republican presidential candidate once called Cindy McCain a cunt. The self-aware humor of the team constantly reciting this fact, then saying how if only they were online they could drive the association into people's brains, actually doesn't get old! The clip is below, and warning: half the dialogue is, obviously, an extreme obscenity.

Today, Barack Obama fired the guy he hired to pick his Vice President. The guy, Jim Johnson, apparently got some cash from Countrywide's controversial "real estate loans for friends of our CEO" program. Countrywide destroyed the entire nation, so Johnson has been criticized. Also he picked Geraldine Ferraro for Veep back in the day, so.... Anyway, Obama now needs to hire someone to vet the guy he hires to vet his Vice Presidential choice. We recommend the crooked NBA ref. (The stress of the campaign has driven poor Obama back to his precious, precious cigarettes.)

Time's Mark Halperin, the most singularly irritating and negatively influential "reporter" in politics today, got a "mid- to high- six-fugre sum" to write a book about the ongoing presidential campaign with New York's John Heilemann. Hey, Mark already wrote a book about the 2008 campaign! It was called The Way To Win and it was about how "The Way To Win" was to emulate Karl Rove and suck Matt Drudge's cock. That book was sooo prescient and successful—remember how well that strategy worked for Hillary Clinton? Hell, remember how well that strategy worked for Mark's book sales? [NYP]

Barack Obama made two moves recently that leave him open to charges of selling out. One, his selection of James Johnson to help select a running mate. Johnson is a former CEO of Fannie Mae, where he helped usher in the subprime lending crisis. Also he's a Bilderberg attendee! The other new hire, though, will surely upset many more liberal stalwarts: Obama named Jason Furman as his economic policy director. Furman is a former Clintonite economist who loooooooves giant retailer Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, he says, is a boon to poor Americans, because their prices are so low. They keep their prices low, critics charge, by fucking over their non-union workforce and aiding the export of manufacturing jobs overseas, but Furman argued in a 2005 paper that consumers saved enough money shopping at the store to offset the impact on wages. Obama's never quite been a champion of organized labor, but this selection does throw him open to accusations of pretty blatant hypocrisy (hooray electoral politics!):

This last weekend, comedian and writer Al Franken won the Democratic-Farmer Labor party nomination for Senator from Minnesota. He'll face incumbent Republican Norm Coleman in November. It will be an odd and embarrassing race for everyone, but mostly for Minnesota. On his own merits, Franken can't win. But Coleman is a scumbag and preening moron almost as "out of touch" with his constituents as the former SNL performer. So naturally Coleman is playing his trump card already: Minnesotans are old fools incapable of understanding irony. Which is why they've accused the dude who wrote Stuart Saves His Family of writing "porn," and why Franken is now only telling jokes off the record.

The "fist-bump" between Barack Obama and his wife Michelle in St. Paul the other night has already become a semi-iconic detail of an iconic moment—the first black presidential candidate sharing a funny and seemingly genuine moment of affection with his wife. Of course once the glow of "hooray us! we finally made it up to the blacks!" wears off among the pundit class, expect to hear about it again. The fist-bump, we mean—or, as the New York Times might refer to it, the "closed-fist high-fives." You will probably hear that it is a Black Gesture. Some particularly bent people will say even more confused things. Because these people are old and rich and out of touch. Much like the (admittedly AWESOME) time Obama "brushed his shoulders off," it was a simple moment that helped demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, Obama is "in touch" with Real Americans. Allow us to explain!

Hillary Clinton's non-concession speech last night was apparently an insane circus of self-delusion and argument. Also the reporters to supporters ratio had to be totally out of whack, considering how many first-hand accounts are on the web today. So let's pick some anecdotes, shall we? First, from the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, the mystery of the reporter who KILLED CLINTON

Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for President! It's so exciting and historic! Finally, newspapers across the nation get to run all those "what does it mean that we have a black candidate" pieces they've been sitting on for months. In the interest of having something new to say about this campaign of a thousand cuts, we've compiled a gallery of newspaper front pages from around the nation (but mostly New York and DC). Check them out, along with our commentary and exclusive analysis, below.

Today, the Associated Press announced that Barack Obama is officially the Democratic nominee for President. Which means that the Hillary Clinton campaign is finished. It's been a long, long time. Two years, actually! We first tracked the history of the Clinton campaign back in April, when it was just probably doomed. Now it's time to revisit that history, this time with a big fancy chart. The data points are Barack Obama's closing prices on political futures betting site InTrade. The higher the closing price, the more likely investors think his nomination is (with 100 being dead-on certainty). Click to enlarge the chart, and to re-read our April history explaining the significance of the dates mentioned. Now updated with relevant "May" and "Early June" information!

Clinton campaign head Terry McAuliffe is clearly going nuts trying to explain anything about the Clinton campaign's strategy of not conceding. He said on The Today Show that if Obama reaches the magic number of delegates tonight (which he will, with victories in South Dakota, Montana, and a few more superdelegates), Hillary will "congratulate him and call him the nominee." This led to the AP explaining that Hil has effectively conceded. The problem is: she hasn't. She called The View to explain her position and upset Barbara.

Lovable media mogul Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp, has been going around predicting a landslide victory for the Democrats this November and also big-upping Senator Barack Obama—he called Obama a "superstar" and a "complete phenomenon" at a conference yesterday. He apparently nudged his pet tabloid the New York Post toward an Obama endorsement in the New York primaries (despite his early attempts at making friendly with the Clintons). And as the Post goes, so goes, well, other News Corp holdings. So maybe Fox News will let up on Barry a bit? They've never been terribly friendly to McCain anyhow. But why would this noted conservative tyrant endorse Mr. Liberal Hope? He's done it before—with a friendly little weasel named Tony Blair.

Charlie Crist is the Republican governor of the great state of Florida. He is pretty popular out there. Less polarizing than Jeb Bush, certainly. And he's been named as a possible running mate for John McCain. There is just one problem. Everyone seems to think he's gay, for some crazy reason. "Some crazy reason," by the way, means "a 21-year-old Katherine Harris staffer who claimed he fucked Crist, and who went on the say that another Harris staffer was Crist's long-term partner." Crist denies everything. And now, conveniently, the heterosexual "Charlie Crist sex tape" (ugggghhhh) has surfaced. You'll never guess who's behind it!