• In case you missed them, click HERE to watch in full all of the major speeches delivered at this year’s Democratic National Convention.
• While Geraldine Ferraro was selected for the VP spot on the Democratic Ticket in the 1984 Presidential Election, Sarah Palin was selected as the first runner-up in the Miss Alaska Beauty Pageant.
• David Duchovny enters rehab to battle sex addiction.
• Slash is not a fan of the blogger arrested for leaking the GNR album Chinese Democracy.
• US Decathlete Bryan Clay says that Michael Phelps isn’t the best.
• Nastia Liukin is cashing in her Olympic Gold.
• Is Carrie Underwood making a play for Michael Phelps?
• Has David Beckham met his match?
• Abercrombie & Fitch doesn’t want to alienate anyone.
• Mena Suvari gets nekkid, rocks corn rows.
• Blake Lively seems to be missing a key element of her outfit.
• Michael Phelps swims with some kids, films with Entourage.
• “I do pass gas a lot. I guarantee it smells like roses.” — Jessica Simpson
• Me’Shell NdegeOcello is 39, Rebecca De Mornay is 46 and Michael Jackson is 50 years old today. Click HERE to see who else is celebrating a birthday today.
• Lauren LC Conrad is lookin’ to find a new place to live.
• Michael Jackson promises that the best is yet to come.
• I’m really Overdosin’ off of YOUR love.

Here are a few pics of lurvers Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel making a very public show of affection towards one another (ie. suckin’ face) in front of Bisazza furniture store in LA yesterday afternoon after they spent quite a bit of time shopping inside together:

Look at that … so in lurve, so happy to show how in lurve they are. It’s precious! I find it interesting that the pair were shopping for new furniture together … perhaps because they are planning to move in together … perhaps because they may be planning a wedding sometime soon as I recently speculated they might? Whatevs, I like these two together … Jessica makes a great match for JT. I think she softens him up a bit. He’s been walking around like he’s got a huge stick up his butt for far too long … I think Jessica Biel is very good for him.

[Photo credit: INFdaily]

In mid-June, the amazing artist M.I.A. played one of her usual stunning shows at Day 2 of the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, TN and announced from the stage that that performance was her “last show” ever, implying that she was forever quitting the music biz. In a new interview, M.I.A. confirms that she did intend to stop making music after her Bonnaroo performance but has since changed her mind:

MIA has spoken out about her comments onstage at Bonnaroo in June, when she told the audience that the slot was her last gig ever. The Brooklyn-based Sri Lankan said “It was my last ever show. And it still is. I stopped touring after that and I didn’t want to make music again. I was quite happy to just leave it all behind. I was happy with what I had achieved.” As previously reported, the rapper cancelled her summer tour of the UK, and while onstage at Bonnaroo said “This is my last show, and I’m glad I’m spending it with all my hippies.” But it seems she’s finding it hard to stay away from music, and is currently planning her new record after enjoying massive success with her song ‘Paper Planes’ in the US. “With the success of ‘Paper Planes’, there’s pull for me to make another record. Even my mum believes in me more” she told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s a nice encouragement. But I was planning my life as a fishing woman on the outskirts of Cambodia. That’s a joke.” She also says if she had permanently quit the music business, that a foray into the film world was likely to have been her next step. “I think I would have gone and made a film. As an artist you want to play around with mediums and see if you can get the point across in a different way. I wanted to stay an outsider and prolong the process of getting accepted.”

Praise sweet baby Jebus, this is great news. M.I.A. is one of those artists who is far too creative to stop making her art. She is just so talented, it would’ve been a damn shame if she had decided to stop making music altogether. This is really great news, I’m glad to hear that we can expect to hear more from her in the future (that being said, I hope she does make a foray into film in addition to making more music, I think she’d do well in that arena as well). I suppose a movie like Pineapple Express (which used her brilliant song Paper Planes to promote the movie and shoot the track into the public consciousness) does have its merits. Wee!

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First it was Alan Panettiere, father of Hollywood “It” Girl Hayden Panettiere, who was arrested earlier this month (for alleged spousal assault) and now Robert Duff, father of Hollywood “It” Girl Hilary Duff, who has gotten himself arrested. What gives?

A judge in Texas has ordered the father of actress and singer Hilary Duff to spend 10 days in jail for contempt of court. Bob Duff was led away in handcuffs Wednesday during a court hearing after Judge Thomas Stansbury in Houston determined he violated an injunction against selling assets without court approval. The Houston Chronicle reported in its online edition that Bob Duff must pay into a court repository $367,537 he earned from selling stocks last month. Bob Duff’s attorney Robert Piro said his client would post bond and file an appeal. Bob and Susan Duff are in the midst of a bitter divorce. Stansbury determined Bob Duff should pay Susan $12,500 for Hilary’s birthday party, which was the subject of the hearing. Her mother wanted $25,000 to pay for a present and party.

Ew, I really hope this isn’t a new trend in Hollywood. And I suppose we shouldn’t forget that Michael Lohan, father of Hollywood “It” Girl Lindsay Lohan, was the first Hollywood dad to get busted and thrown into jail for crimes and misdemeanors. Who’d a thunk that it’d be the dads and not the wild children getting busted all over the place?

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Vicki B was on hand at Harvey Nichols in Manchester, UK yesterday to make an in-store appearance for the launch of her newest fragrance called Signature. VB was an angelic vision in white as she stepped out in front of the cameras for yesterday’s in-store event …

… but upon closer inspection, it was discovered that VB (presumably in her haste to make sure that her outfit, make-up and hair were perfectly styled) seems to have overlooked one teeny little detail in her personal cleaning process. Homegirl totally forgot to scrape the gross crud in her ear before she stepped out in front of the cameras … I must warn y’all … it’s gross. After the jump, check out just how gross her ear looked …

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The New York Times is reporting that Senator John McCain will choose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate, making her only the second woman to be nominated for Vice President of the United States of America (Democrat Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro to be his running mate back in 1984, she was the first):

Senator John McCain chose Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate on Friday, shaking up the political world with a surprise pick at a time when his campaign has been trying to attract women, especially disaffected supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. In choosing Ms. Palin — a 44-year-old conservative Christian and self-described “hockey mom” who has been governor for less than two years — the McCain campaign reached far outside the Beltway in an election where the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama, is running on a platform of change. The pick, confirmed by Republicans familiar with the decision, amounted to a roll of the dice, a gamble that an infusion of new leadership — and the novelty of the Republican party’s first female candidate for vice president — would more than compensate for the risk that Ms. Palin could undercut one of the McCain campaign’s central arguments, their claim that Mr. Obama is too inexperienced to be president. But Ms. Palin ran as a change agent when she was elected as governor of Alaska in 2006, and in a move that might have appealed to Mr. McCain, she took political heat from members of her own party for turning the spotlight on the failures of Alaska Republicans, some of whom had been beset by corruption scandals. She opposes abortion rights, which could help pacify social conservatives who were wary as rumors swirled that Mr. McCain might pick a running mate who supports them. But she differs with Mr. McCain on a controversial environment issue that centers on her home state: she supports drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Mr. McCain’s opposition to drilling — even after he changed positions and began advocating for off-shore oil drilling — has upset many Republicans. The choice of Ms. Palin was a closely guarded secret, and she flew under the political radar for months as Mr. McCain conducted his search for a running mate. Much of the public discussion in recent days had focused on Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and Mr. McCain’s one-time rival for the Republican nomination; Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota; Tom Ridge, the former Homeland Security secretary, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrat-turned-independent who was Al Gore’s running mate in 2000.

I gotta say, this choice was well-played by McCain. It’s a risky move, especially considering that he and she don’t have much in common. I was sure that McCain was going to pick either the turncoat Joseph Lieberman or the extremely scary Mitt Romney. I guess McCain felt that he needed to choose a running mate with a gimmick to try and bolster support for his campaign — a Pro-Life soccer mom who supports oil drilling in Alaska (one of our nation’s most valued natural resources), who won her governorship (an office she has held for LESS than 2 years) by denouncing her fellow Republicans (who, in her defense, were corrupt), was nicknamed “Sarah Barracuda” in high school and was first runner-up in the Miss Alaska Beauty Pageant back in 1984, when Geraldine Ferraro was the Vice Presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. Yeah, good luck with that :) This race for the White House just got a wee bit more interesting.

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It’s official. Senator Barack Obama, from the State of Illinois, has formally accepted the nomination by the Democratic Party as candidate for President of the United States of America. On the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr’s I Have A Dream speech, Obama delivered a thundering speech (wherein he formally accepted his party’s nomination and explained to the crowd,the country as a whole and the world how he plans to bring change to the US) at Invesco Field in Denver, CO to close out the Democratic National Convention last night. Here are a few pics of Obama delivering his speech and a pic of Obama with his wife Michelle and his running mate Joe Biden (with his wife Jill) as they stepped forward together, into history, on the way to the campaign trail:

Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party presidential nomination on Thursday, declaring that the “American promise has been threatened” by eight years under President Bush and that John McCain represented a continuation of policies that undermined the nation’s economy and imperiled its standing around the world. The speech by Senator Obama, in front of an audience of nearly 80,000 people on a warm night in a football stadium refashioned into a vast political stage for television viewers, left little doubt how he intended to press his campaign against Mr. McCain this fall. In cutting language, and to cheers that echoed across the stadium, he linked Mr. McCain to what he described as the “failed presidency of George W. Bush” and — reflecting what has been a central theme of his campaign since he entered the race — “the broken politics in Washington.” “America, we are better than these last eight years,” he said. “We are a better country than this.” But Mr. Obama went beyond attacking Mr. McCain by linking him to Mr. Bush and his policies. In the course of a 42-minute speech that ended with a booming display of fireworks and a shower of confetti, he offered searing and far-reaching attacks on his presumptive Republican opponent, repeatedly portraying him as the face of the old way of politics and failed Republican policies. He said Mr. McCain was out of touch with the problems of everyday Americans. “It’s not because John McCain doesn’t care,” he said. “It’s because John McCain doesn’t get it.” And he went so far as to attack the presumed strength of Mr. McCain’s campaign, national security. “You know, John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell, but he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives,” he said. The speech loomed as arguably Mr. Obama’s most important of the campaign to date. It was an opportunity to present himself to Americans just now beginning to tune in on this campaign, to make the case against Mr. McCain and to offer what many Democrats say he has failed to offer to date: an idea of what he stands for, beyond a promise of change. To that end, he emphasized what he described as concrete steps he would take to address the anxieties of working-class Americans, promising tax cuts for the middle class and pledging to wean the country from dependence on Middle East oil within 10 years to address high fuel prices. With the speech, Mr. Obama closed out his party’s convention here and prepared for a quick shift of public attention to the Republicans as Mr. McCain moved to name his running mate and his party got ready for its convention in St. Paul on Monday. He delivered it in a most unconventional setting, becoming the third nominee of a major party in the nation’s history to leave the site of his convention to give his acceptance speech at a stadium. In this case, it was Invesco Field, set against the Rockies and about a mile from the arena where he had been nominated the night before. His aides chose the stadium to signal a break from typical politics and to permit thousands of his supporters from across the country to hear him speak. And it came on a night that offered — by the coincidence of scheduling — a reminder of the historic nature of the Obama candidacy: 45 years to the day after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the Mall in Washington. Mr. Obama is the first African-American to be nominated for the White House by a major party, a fact that, for all its significance, has been barely mentioned over the course of this four-day gathering. Even in invoking the anniversary of the King speech, Mr. Obama only alluded to race. But he quoted a famous phrase from Dr. King’s address to reinforce a central theme of his own speech. “America, we cannot turn back,” Mr. Obama said. “Not with so much work to be done.”

Wow. I must admit, hearing Obama’s speech gave me chills … and it had a strong significance for me. When Dr. King spoke of his Dream 45 years ago, it occurred to me that he was speaking of just this moment in time … when our country can finally realize that all men are created equal. I don’t know about y’all but I can deffo feel the winds of change blowin’ … and it’s about time. I remember when Governor Bill Clinton accepted his nomination for President of the United States back in 1992 … I could feel it then that he was going to win the presidency and put our country back on course. I got that same feelin’ this time, y’all … and it’s an amazing feeling … it’s called Hope.

After the jump, watch the entirety of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in case you missed it last night or want to hear it again …

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