Ever heard the saying, "You're a Republican before you're 30 you have no heart and if you're a Democrat after you're thirty, you have no brain." Since I'm definitely closer to 30 than I am to 20 and my status as a Democrat has not waned one bit, I clearly don't agree with this quote. But based on a recent statement from John McCain, if you vote for him and you're under 30, you might not have a heart or a brain. And you also could end up in Iraq against your will. Why? McCain "doesn't disagree" with the assertion that we need to institute a draft.

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The German magazine Der Speigel reported Saturday that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki supported Barack Obama's Iraq withdrawal plan. This put the White House into such a panic that an aide accidentally emailed the news story to an extended media distribution list instead of an internal email list. The story — that Maliki approves of Obama's plan, not that the White House emailed the news to the world — made international headlines, but this morning, Maliki's camp seemed to have backtracked. An aide to the prime minister announced that his boss had been "misinterpreted and mistranslated," although he didn't cite any specific comments. The aide's statement might have had something to do with a little call the officials at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad put in to Maliki's office to "express concern and seek clarification." I'm just going to take a wild guess that Der Speigel stands firmly behind its reporting. [WP]

Matt Lauer scored a money quote from John McCain on the today show earlier today, when the senator from Arizona said that bringing troops home from Iraq is "not too important." What's important, he said, is to lower casualties. Apparently, he doesn't quite understand the correlation. Of course, Democrats — notably Senators Joe Biden, Harry Reid, and John Kerry — are pouncing.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush said in Germany yesterday that he didn't regret invading Iraq at all. Oh, Republicans! Can't live with them… Can't live with them.

It's bad enough to see a headline, on the day after the American death toll in Iraq reaches the 4,000 mark, that reads: Bush Says War's Outcome Will "Merit the Sacrifice," which honestly might have thrown me into a homicidal rage if one of my loved ones were one of those 4,000 dead soldiers. But it's even worse when that headline shares the front page of the Washington Post with a photo of our president standing next to a huge, bespectacled Easter bunny looking like the idiot he is. [HP]

DISGUSTING According to Iraqi officials, two mentally retarded women were strapped with explosives, sent to busy Baghdad markets, and blown up by remote control, killing 98 and wounding 200. The U.S. report of the incident calls the women suicide bombers, making no mention of their mental capacity, and blames the attack on al Quaeda. [CNN]

• Eighty-three percent of minority elected officials want the U.S. out of Iraq, which is 29 percentage points more than the public at large. [USAT]

• "It is time for 50 Cent to be a man of his word, and retire," Mark Dice, spokesman for The Resistance, explained. "The world will be a better place when this Satanic piece of filth retires and stops making music." And what more is there to say? [SOHH]

• A black columnist at the Indianapolis Star was fired for writing a column about the black city council president called "Coons for Power." [RP]

• Minority female associates are not feeling the law firm gig. [Law]

• Jay-Z plans to tie Elvis Presley for most #1 albums, but he's got to get through lukewarm reviews and Chris Brown's teenyboppers first. [AHH]

• That's twice in one day, Tyra. [BV]

• Lupe Fiasco continues to "Dumb It Down." [Bossip]

• So the marketing people just want this album to fail? [C&D]

• Melyssa Ford celebrates her birthday, another chance to wear something skin-tight. [CL]

• Condoleezza Rice says, "Ask not what your country can do for you…" [CNN]

Lennox Yearwood, a revered, founder of the Hip Hop Caucus, and a vocal anti-war activist, was arrested along with Cindy Sheehan and two others outside of the Petraeus hearings Monday. Except Cindy Sheehan escaped the incident without needing to be rushed to the hospital in a wheelchair. Lennox didn't. according to the Washington Post, he was initially targeted by police because he cut in line and refused to move back to the end and was arrested for disorderly conduct and assault on a police officer, which is a felony. The video's right here, and I'm not seeing police being assaulted.

[HP]

Tyra Banks, who announced her NYC arrival Monday in the most obnoxious way possible (see above and below), was a little more discreet at a send-off party for her Marine brother, Devin.

Spies spotted the former Victoria's Secret model at Chin Chin on East 49th Street last Friday at a "very private" party for her younger brother, Devin Banks, an Air Force cadet who is leaving for Iraq on Aug. 9. "Tyra was with her brother and their mom and Devin's wife. Everyone was hugging and kissing and sending him off." A rep for Banks declined to comment about her patriotic family.

She flew relatively under the radar in LA, mainly because the paps have bigger (or should I say, smaller and whiter?) fish to fry, like Paris, Lindsay, Hilary, Nicole, Hayden, etc. But the NY press seems inordinately excited about Tyra's arrival. There goes her privacy — and John Utendahl's.

[NYP, MG]

The next time Rihanna's played out "Umbrella" comes on, and you are ready to either cover your ears, throw a shoe at your radio, or change the station, stop. Count to 10. And think of the soldiers.

Because, while Rihanna's version of the song is an infectious love ditty, it was actually written with the Iraq war in mind.

"Umbrella" scribe Terius Nash, aka the Dream, wrote it as a wartime lullaby, for his people who are stationed in Iraq. "Emotionally, I was tapped into what the world was goin through - the war. We losin a lot of those people over there. Most of those troops are from Georgia," says the singer / songwriter, who resides in Atlanta. "I have a best friend that was in the Army. I have another friend that was injured. To me, 'Umbrella' meant a lot emotionally about what the country was going though. I don't think the times we're in are really as bad as it was back in the day, but we ain't never seen it before. You can hear somebody tell you but you don't really know how the '60s went down until something pops off and it's like, 'Wow. Can you believe a human being could do that? Yeah, they really could. People have that power to cause harm. I felt like that song had the power to deliver us from some of that."

The song, which I am so over, if you couldn't tell, hasn't really delivered me from anything. Although it has given Rihanna a number 1 hit and an umbrella line, and propelled her to international superstardom. Do I see an Iraq concert in her future?

[VIBE]

Michelle Obama on the media's distorted portrayal of black Americans:

As we've all said in the black community, we don't see all of who we are in, in the media. We see snippets… of our community and distortions of our community," she said. "So the world has this perspective that somehow Barack and Michelle Obama are different, that we're unique. And we're not. You just haven't seen us before."

On how war is strain on family values:

"All of our emotional and financial resources… as a country have been totally put into the war. We haven't talked about the domestic issue in about 10 years," she said. "There are no serious conversations about health care or education, or child care, or minimum wage. I mean, these are the basic issues that eat away at the family structure. So you can't just tell, you know, a family of four to suck it up and make it work."

On her marriage:

"I don't want to paint some unrealistic picture of who we are so that in the end, when it falls apart and if we haven't lived up to this unrealistic expectation, people feel let down in some way," Obama told anchor Robin Roberts. "This is who we are. I've got a loud mouth. I tease my husband. He is incredibly smart, and he is very able to deal with a strong woman, which is one of the reasons why he can be president, because he can deal with me."

[ABCNews]

Twista's an unlikely rapper to get into the political game or any game for that matter. He's pretty low key. Who knew he had a weekly column in RedEye, the Chicago Tribune's free newspaper? Yesterday, he decried Bush's veto of the Iraq spending bill and aligned himself with Rosie O'Donnell. A complicated guy, this Twista.

President Bush just vetoed a bill that would bring the troops home. I feel like he was bogus for vetoing that bill.

He said he was gonna do it but he finally actually did it. I want to tell people to write, call, or come up with some way to give suggestions to help say something to effect our troops coming home.

We need to say something effective to bring our troops back home. We have troops dying every day and I think it's time that they come back home to the people they care about. I wanna know what you all think we can do to help bring the troops home because something needs to be done.

There are two sides to the situation in Iraq but I kind of feel the way Rosie O'Donnell feels: They didn't attack us so why should we have to attack them? Sometimes I don't know what to think.

We don't either, Twista.

[RedEye via Vibe]