RELATED: Donald Trump To Fox News: I Have My ‘Ducks In A Row’ For Third Party Run

The Little Combover that Could tweeted today that he will be in Nevada to make a “major announcement,” “all media welcome” (obviously). According to The Hill:

“I will be making a major announcement tomorrow (Thursday, February 2) at 12:30 pm at Trump International Hotel & Tower, Las Vegas, Nevada,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “I will be arriving this evening at approximately 11:30 pm. The announcement will pertain to the Presidential race. All media welcome.”

He has threatened to endorse several times and done nothing, leaving the media to coddle its broken heart every time, so no word on whether hosting yet another ridiculous “Donald Trump has political relevance” event on Groundhog Day is an intentional joke or not (maybe Bill Murray will make a cameo appearance?). Also no word on whether he is going to say anything of consequence, or try the Herman Cain/Time Magazine approach of endorsing everything/everyone. Or maybe Trump will pull a fast one on us and endorse Stephen Colbert, announcing a “huge” donation to Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow. Who knows! Either way, the fact that Donald Trump’s “major announcements” are still happening a year after the expiration date on his political relevance passed is a stark yet entirely unclear statement on the state of American politics today.

UPDATE: Politico is reporting that the “major announcement” is an endorsement of Newt Gingrich, according to several sources that have confirmed it to the publication. Adjust your calendars accordingly!

Wednesday afternoon, Busey issued a statement, announcing the withdrawal of his endorsement.

“It is not time for me to be endorsing anyone at this time! When there are the two final candidates, then I will endorse.”

When Goodin pressed Busey on the change of heart, the actor’s spokesman told her that while Busey “likes” Gingrich, he just didn’t want to endorse anyone at this time.

Busey isn’t the first actor with a cult-ish following to endorse a GOP candidate. In 2007, Chuck Norris threw his weight behind Mike Huckabee, making several appearances and surprisingly entertaining commercials on his behalf. For fans of Busey on edge as to when the field may be trimmed to just two candidates, recent history says that you’ll have about two months of anxiety: in 2008, Huckabee dropped out of the nomination race on March 4, leaving it a two-man (albeit one-sided) race between John McCain and Ron Paul.

RELATED: Herman Cain’s ‘Major Announcement’: ‘I Am Suspending My Presidential Campaign’

“It’s been a strange day,” Jarrett acknowledged, and a “long, twisted trail” for the Cain train. But the way he quit his race, Jarrett pondered, “invites the question: was this truly an attempt to become president, or simply a campaign that was all about Herman Cain?” Toeplitz replied that only Herman Cain truly knows, and that her guess was that he merely hadn’t thought out the worst case scenario very well. “I’m sure he was thinking several months ago when he announced his campaign: ‘what could go wrong?’”

Calling the speech “one of the more bizarre moments in modern American history,” he noted that the way the speech was presented and the event’s tone of celebration, “only to have him say ‘ha, just kidding, I quit,’ that might be regarded as a bit cruel to some of his hard-working supporters.” He also asked whether the sex scandals were really to blame for the fall of his campaign (Toeflitz suggested Cain’s inability to answer questions about Libya was “the nail in the coffin”) and took a shot at the “strange website Women for Cain… which is supposed to be headed by, of all people, Gloria Cain.”

RELATED: New Herman Cain ‘Women For Cain’ Site Headlined By Stock Photo Of Female Fans

The segment via Fox News below:

It’s unusual enough for a presidential candidate to challenge a member of Congress to a debate, but in light of Perry’s performances in the forums thus far, his invitation was doubly confounding.

Here’s Perry’s invitation to Pelosi, via GOP12:(full letter here)

“I am in Washington Monday and would love to engage you in a public debate about my Overhaul Washington plan versus the congressional status quo.

I think it would be a tremendous service to the American public to see a public airing of those differences. Let the people decide.

If Monday doesn’t work, perhaps we could find a time in Iowa over the course of the next month to discuss these issues in front of the people of America’s heartland.”

Perry’s plan, which calls for Congress’ pay to be cut in half, along with their time in Washington,drew sharp criticism from House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer. He accused Perry of “pandering to the Tea Party,” and questioned the seriousness of the plan. Perry’s letter to Pelosi is pegged to Hoyer’s “outburst over my ‘Overhauling Washington’ plan.”

Since Monday didn’t fit in to Leader Pelosi’s schedule, Perry might be tempted to follow up on his plan B meeting in Iowa. He probably ought to just let it rest.

Update: Here’s Gov. Perry’s sad trombone rejoinder: “Something @NancyPelosi would like to forget: passing a 2k-page gov takeover of healthcare without reading it. American ppl haven’t forgotten”

It gets better, though. The site has obtained a letter from Gov. Perry, to Leader Pelosi, in which he challenges her to said debate on Monday in Washington, or if that doesn’t work…someplace in Iowa.

Here’s Perry’s invitation to Pelosi, via GOP12:(full letter here)

“I am in Washington Monday and would love to engage you in a public debate about my Overhaul Washington plan versus the congressional status quo.

I think it would be a tremendous service to the American public to see a public airing of those differences. Let the people decide.

If Monday doesn’t work, perhaps we could find a time in Iowa over the course of the next month to discuss these issues in front of the people of America’s heartland.”

Perry’s plan, which calls for Congress’ pay to be cut in half, along with their time in Washington, drew sharp criticism from House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer. He accused Perry of “pandering to the Tea Party,” and questioned the seriousness of the plan. Perry’s letter to Pelosi is pegged to Hoyer’s “outburst over my ‘Overhauling Washington’ plan.”

Aside from the dubious merits of his plan, this debate idea makes about as much sense as 1986-era Bill Buckner challenging Ozzie Smith to a nationally televised game of pepper. The thing Perry should least be trying to remind people of, at this point, is his performance in debates, and there’s really no upside to such a challenge.

If he’s serious about this, which means he thinks Pelosi actually will drop everything on Monday (fingers crossed), and that he can beat her in such a debate, the best case scenario is that he pulls off a Bayonne Bleeder-style upset against an opponent he’s not even running against. More than likely, Pelosi blows him off, and he just looks weak and desperate. Worst case: Pelosi accepts, and destroys him like a womp rat.

On the other hand, if this is just a publicity stunt, it serves only to remind people of his weakness in debates, and fosters a perception that he’s trying to look tough next to someone he’s not even running against.

Perry’s plan is an obvious ploy to exploit record dissatisfaction with Congress, and it might have had some political impact if he hadn’t gotten sidetracked into a feud with Steny Hoyer. Instead, he’s punching down at members of the House minority, and losing.

(h/t TPC)

According to Kurtz, Archibald’s manager is not sanguine about the prospect:

Daniel Harris, owner and manager of Archibald’s Gentleman’s Club in downtown D.C., is not ready to endorse the legislation. The businessman said with a laugh that chunks of change just won’t work in his establishment: “You can’t put a coin in a garter belt.”

Harris goes on to tell Kurtz that “he has handled ‘millions and millions’ of dollar bills since Archibald’s opened in 1969,” a fact that could, by itself, prove a tipping point for support of the new law. “I think it would be very awkward for everyone involved,” Harris told Kurtz. “How much more would a coin weigh than a dollar bill? It would be very hard.”

Yeah, I see what he did there.

I have always, personally, found strip clubs distasteful. The creepy-eye-contact, relentless attempt to cop a feel vibe of the dude-to-dancer transaction just makes me wanna barf. The stigma surrounding sex work in this country, plus our weird cultural repression around sex, leads to much more exploitation than empowerment.

Even so, there’s no reason that these women necessarily have to suffer. The best option would be for the creeps at strip clubs to quit being such cheap bastards. Barring that, though, if single dollar bills ever really did go out of circulation, the clubs could easily sell paper chits at the door, similar to casino chips, to achieve the same effect. Such a system would, however, carry the disadvantage of “sticker shock,” when these guys realized just how much this hobby was costing them.

The bill promises to save taxpayers money, not because coins are cheaper to produce than bills, but because they last longer:

Each year, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing produces around 4 billion $1 bills — nearly half of all paper currency made.  And each year, more than 3 billion of these dollars are pulled from circulation, shredded, and sent to landfills.  That is nearly 15.2 million pounds of paper currency every year.

Not only are dollar coins recyclable, they have an average circulation of 30 years. When you do the math, a single dollar coin can do the job of up to 17 dollar bills over the course of its lifetime.

This analysis, of course, doesn’t account for the jillions of additional dollars that taxpayers will lose to couch cushions, and to the tip cup at Starbucks when they confuse the new coins with quarters.

While it looks to me like the strippers will likely survive the Dollarpocalypse, kudos to Kurtz for identifying a great hook to a dry legislative story, and going the extra mile to get it.

Here’s the statement from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney:(via email from The White House)

Today, the President asked to address the Congress about the need for urgent action on the economic situation facing the American people as soon as Congress returned from recess.  Both Houses will be back in session after their August recess on Wednesday, September 7th, so that was the date that was requested.  We consulted with the Speaker about that date before the letter was released, but he determined Thursday would work better.  The President is focused on the urgent need to create jobs and grow our economy, so he welcomes the opportunity to address a Joint Session of Congress on Thursday, September 8th and challenge our nation’s leaders to start focusing 100% of their attention on doing whatever they can to help the American people.

While the new date resolves the conflict with the Republican presidential debate, it now falls on the night of the NFL season’s kickoff.

The Hill reports that the House Speaker wrote the following in a letter to the President:

“It is my recommendation that your address be held on the following evening, when we can ensure there will be no parliamentary or logistical impediments that might detract from your remarks.”

As soon as it was announced that the White House was aiming for a speech that would conflict with a GOP debate, many saw it as a unnecessarily “petty and transparent” political move. In a post published earlier today, I called it a smart political move for this very reason. John Boehner, and the GOP that he ostensibly leads, have been hyper-critical of this administration’s effort to address the current economic woes that this country faces. But by pushing the presidential request to address a joint session of Congress so as to not conflict with a GOP political debate, it is hard take the “dire” and “urgent” rhetoric with a straight face. One cannot reasonably complain about a lack of action, and in the next breath say “let’s wait a day for to hear your plan.”

Let me be clear: there is no question that there’s a case to be made that White House gambit of stepping on the GOP debate was a cynical bit of political theater. Their insistence to the contrary (and the fact that the President’s address was always billed as a post-Labor Day event) notwithstanding, it is at least a happy accident. But that is the game of politics, and the President’s supporters have been very vocal in expressing disappointment in how the White House has been getting killed of late in the game of cynical politics. Right now, the White House can reasonably make the point that the GOP asked the president to delay a bipartisan appeal to address the nation’s woes so as to not conflict with the politics of the GOP primary. And that’s probably an expected, if not desired, result from this plan. Asking the President to delay a major policy address before Congress to make way for a political debate is not the best way to show people you’re not playing politics.

Watch the report from CNN below:

Youngman asked specifically if McConnell’s point have view has “poisoned the well” with regards to future negotiations. Obama said the following:

I’m not trying to poke at you guys…I generally don’t watch what is said about me on cable. I generally don’t read what’s said about me even in The Hill, so part of this job is having a thick skin and understanding that a lot of this stuff is not personal. That’s not going to be an impediment…whatever Senator McConnell says about me on the floor of the senate is not going to be an impediment to us getting the deal done. The question’s going to be whether at any given moment are we willing to set politics aside, at least briefly, in order to get something done. I don’t expect politicians to not think about politics. But, every so often there are issues that are urgent, that have to be attended to, and require us to do things that we don’t like to do, that run contrary to our base that gets some constituency that helped elect us agitated because they are looking at it from a narrow prism. We’re supposed to be stepping back and looking at it from the perspective what’s good for the country. And if we are able to remind ourselves of that then there is no reason why we should be able to get things done.

One recalls that when President Bush made similar comments about ignoring both television and printed reports on the political landscape, he was derided as being in a bubble. Is it fair to make the same claim of President Obama?

Watch the sound bit below courtesy of CNN:

The Hill explains that Steele’s talks aren’t complete, but if accepted, Steele would become an official MSNBC political analyst:

Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele is in negotiations with MSNBC to be a political analyst, according to sources.

Steele would be a prominent Republican voice on a network known for its liberal television hosts. If the deal goes through, he would join the cable network in time to offer commentary on the 2012 elections.

Hot Air is calling this an unmistakable sign of the apocalypse, but Steele in many ways is a perfect fit for MSNBC, in the same way Juan Williams and Alan Colmes make for good television over on Fox. He can passionately defend his points without exhibiting any bitterness, and, in fact, it seems he relishes being persistently challenged in his ideology by everyone around him. In his previous appearances with Maddow, the two were as friendly as they were fierce in debate, and Steele is exactly what MSNBC is routinely accused of lacking: a strong Republican voice (the most prominent voice on the right, kind of, on the network is arguably Slate reporter Dave Weigel, a pro-life libertarian who landed on MSNBC after the far-right made a scandal of his anti-Tea Party comments on a private email list). The deal isn’t set in stone, however,  and may take a few more appearances for him to settle in.

Writing for The Hill, Molly K. Hooper reports:

Following a classified briefing on the operation to take down bin Laden, Pelosi told reporters that she called the former president earlier in the day to “congratulate him and thank him for the leadership role he had played in this quest over the years.”

Pelosi was Speaker of the House for two years while Bush was in the White House.

Pelosi said she thought Bush appreciated the call.

“I wanted him to know the appreciation that many of us have in a bipartisan way … that his role was important,” she said.

That feeling you feel? That’s the world healing. Read the full report at The Hill.

(H/T @allahpundit)

He wouldn’t go into detail, possibly because those conversations were off the record, so I reached out to the reporter who conducted the “professional left” interview, The Hill‘s Sam Youngman, to see if he knew what Olbermann was talking about. He was unamused.

Here’s the clip from last night’s Countdown, on MSNBC:

Gibbs took a lot of flak for that interview (undeservedly, in my view), but in several White House briefings on the subject, I didn’t recall there ever being any doubt as to the ground rules for the interview. It seems unlikely that such confusion would occur between Gibbs and Youngman. Every journalist, every press secretary, and every PR flack worth a nickel knows that, absent a mutual agreement on attribution, everything that’s said to a journalist is presumed to be on the record. It’s even more unlikely that Gibbs would have failed to mention such a misunderstanding.

I relayed Olbermann’s comments to Sam Youngman, and asked him if he could clarify, or if there was ever any confusion about the ground rules for the interview. Here’s Youngman’s response: (via email)

There absolutely was not. Robert has never disputed we were on the record. Nobody at the White House has. It would be nice if Olbermann would call me before he starts implying that I broke the rules. Of course, that’s just me thinking like an actual journalist.

To be clear, it is entirely possible that someone told Olbermann that Gibbs had meant to make those comments off the record, or later wished he had. I asked Youngman what he thought of that possibility.  Sam responded:

I can’t speak to that. What I know for certain is that neither Robert nor anyone else in the press office has ever even suggested that there was anything improper. In fact, I thought at the time that Robert and his staff handled the whole thing with a lot of class. I think anyone in Washington would attest to my reputation for adhering to the rules. I wonder if Olbermann can say the same thing.

That’s the problem with this sort of offhand revelation. While the intent seems to have been to let Gibbs off the hook to some degree, the effect is to cast doubt on either Youngman’s adherence to basic journalistic principles, or Gibbs’ understanding of them. Since Olbermann failed to divulge the source of the information, or to check it with Youngman and/or Gibbs, the viewer is left to wonder if there’s fire to go along with the smoke.

The rub here is that Olbermann dropped this tidbit without any attribution at all. If it was “off the record,” he shouldn’t have mentioned it at all, except maybe as his own opinion. If it was “on background,” he should have used whatever attribution he and his source agreed upon, and if it was “on the record,” he obviously should have cited the source by name.

I reached out to Keith Olbermann for clarification this morning, but he has not responded thus far.

People often wonder what the usefulness of “off the record” sources is, if you’re not allowed to use the information obtained. This type of sourcing is sometimes referred to as “for guidance,” meaning that the source providing the information doesn’t want to be identified, but the information can often be used if it can be verified independent of the source. For example, if I ask the “John Doe” campaign about a remark their candidate made, they might send me a relevant YouTube clip “for guidance.” I can then decide if I want to use the clip, but I can’t divulge that the campaign pointed me to it.

Off the record sourcing can also be useful in helping a reporter to judge whether pursuing a particular angle on a story is worthwhile. For example, if I’m tracking down rumors that candidate “Doe” is a secret drug dealer, a trusted source can tell me “off the record” that I’m on the right track, and I should check Doe’s garbage can for crack vials. I can’t divulge that information, or the source, but I can report what I find in the garbage can.

As Gibbs echoed my sentiment about liberals turning out in November, I realized that Gibbs had done something rare, indeed: He had seized control of the news cycle for the left. Now that he has their attention, will it pay off?

Here are several of Gibbs’ answers to reporters today:

Whether intentional or not, Gibbs seems to have hit on the solution to the biggest problem facing Democrats in November: a sleepy, discontented base. I don’t think I’ve ever seen liberals as energized as they were yesterday. Hopefully, they were listening today. For the Democrats, framing this midterm election as a choice, not a referendum, is crucial.

While it’s doubtful Gibbs saw this reaction coming, I’m sure he meant to reach another audience. Is it an accident that he made these remarks to The Hill, and not one of his more regular sounding boards, like Politico? I think not, especially when you think back to the last time Gibbs supposedly put his foot in his mouth. That would be when he told Meet the Press that there were enough seats in play for the Republicans to take back the House.

This seems to be a pretty clear strategy to wake Democrats up from their “how many seats are we gonna lose?” doldrums, and remind people that, while not everything they want is getting done now, a GOP-led House promises a full stop, or a slide back.

It was Rothstein’s story about leaked e-mails from Journolist that forced Weigel to issue a mea culpa the day before his resignation.  While it’s unclear how long Jonathan Strong of the conservative Daily Caller had other e-mails, it was Rothstein’s reporting that put the attention on Weigel.

In an e-mail to Mediaite, Rothstein defended FishbowlDC’s decision to write about the leaked e-mails, saying “this is serious for a blogger who covers conservatives. We have a vested interest in knowing and informing that a conservative beat journalist has a clear and angry opposition to the subject of his reporting.”

When pressed on whether there were second thoughts about reporting on e-mails leaked from a private listserv where the participants are expected to maintain confidentiality, Rothstein said she had no concerns. “We are not a member of JournoList. It’s not law. It’s a club,” she said. “It’s private to the members. Once the contents of messages are extracted, they are not private.”

While not speculating on the motivations of the leaker, Rothstein said that the leaker ran the risk of attracting the wrath of Journolist members but that FishbowlDC wasn’t obligated to abide by Journolists’ confidentiality.

Rothstein–a former gossip columnist for The Hill–and Dornic have taken a hard, traditional journalism stand in going after Weigel’s transgressions.  In a post about an e-mail Weigel sent to conservative staffers, Rothstein and Dornic said:

We at FishbowlDC question why Weigel continues airing his political laundry. If you’re a reporter, you’re supposed to be objective. We shouldn’t know if he voted for Ron Paul, President Obama or David Hasselhoff. If you’re going to be reporting on any political movement, you are supposed to take an unbiased position.

That set-off a quick response from new media public intellectual Jay Rosen, who tweeted: “So @FishbowlDC has decreed in its clownish stupidity that there is only one way to be trusted as a reporter, “bystander.”"

Dornic–who has spent his career in public relations before joining the blog–has been forced to defend his position that Weigel overstepped the boundaries when it came to venting his frustrations with the people he covers. Dornic called for Weigel’s firing just moments before the resignation was announced.

In the end, Rothstein rejected Mediaite’s assertion that there bad blood between FishbowlDC and Weigel based on a series of  especially relentless posts in the last two weeks. She told me she’d never met or seen Weigel until last night at a Huffington Post party.  By the way, she reports he refused to shake her hand.

Self-described “newspaper junkie” President Barack Obama weighed in on the shambolic state of the newspaper industry yesterday, and said that he’d be “happy to look at” legislation that let newspapers get tax breaks if they restructured as nonprofits.

Naturally, this is already being spun to oblivion as the door to another accursed bailout. But does that storyline check out?

Two notes:

1. Though this has already spawned headlines like “Obama open to newspaper bailout bill” and “Obama considers newspaper bailout,” in the context of his interview with the editors of the Toledo Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Obama’s was a vague and noncommittal statement; he was asked about specific legislation, said he’d be open to it in theory, and moved on.

2. Even if Obama put his weight behind the main bill under consideration — which he hasn’t at all — it’s not exactly a “bailout” in the sense of giving public money to papers; rather, it reduces their tax burden if they become nonprofits.

The Hill‘s Blog Briefing Room describes the current frontrunner in the Senate as “S. 673, the so-called “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations.” Here’s a fuller summary, from THOMAS:

[S. 673] Amends the Internal Revenue Code to exempt from income taxation a newspaper corporation or organization if: (1) it publishes on a regular basis a newspaper for general circulation; (2) its newspaper contains local, national, and international news stories of interest to the general public and the distribution of such newspaper is necessary or valuable in achieving an educational purpose; and (3) the preparation of the material contained in such newspaper follows a methodology generally accepted as educational.

Exempts the advertising income of a tax-exempt newspaper corporation or organization from taxation as unrelated business income and allows a charitable tax deduction for contributions to such newspaper corporation or organization.

There’s a lot to pick at in that language: “educational” is always a loaded word (do Lifestyle section articles on Megan Fox count?), and the rules on advertising at the end sound like a potentially exploitable loophole. But if the bill went forward, it would probably be tightened up, and anyway the bill has been sitting around in committee since March, not the best sign for its viability. So: huge leap to make this Obama’s baby.

Remember, kids: if Obama kind of sounds like he’s sort of saying something about something, it’s not always a fiery bailout proposal and/or socialism.

via The Daily Beast

Kelechi Kalu

After six years of list-making, The Hill has become known for its ‘Most Beautiful’ feature, so much so that it would be safe to say that The Hill had this particular (-ly trivial) area of DC coverage cornered.

“We consider it a light feature, but we take it seriously when we put it together,” The Hill‘s features editor Kris Kitto, who oversees the top-50 list each year, told us over the phone.

But this year, there’s a new hottest-on-the-Hill list in town — The 50 Most Fabulous People on the Hill— the brainchild of  two wet-behind-the-ears congressional aides, who think that there are some flaws with The Hill‘s list.

But only in DC would there be cause for to 50-hottest lists. We spoke with Kelechi Kalu, 22, one of the upstart list’s founders to find out how Washington could possibly stomach another ranking of the city’s hottest young things.

“I do think there’s room for two lists — competition is one of the spirits of the Hill,” said Kalu. “It’s a fun little outlet amongst all this legislation that’s going on.”

Kalu and Brandon Andrews, who work in the offices of a Democrat and Republican senator respectively, decided to start their own list, “not because we weren’t on [The Hill's] list, but just because we wanted to be involved with the selection process as staffers on the Hill.”

Kalu and Andrews collected nominations using an anonymous email address and asked people to explain ‘why they were fabulous.’ After candidates who didn’t agree to participate were eliminated, the pair ranked them based on how many nominations the candidates received. Of course a little je ne sais quoi went into choosing the top ten, but only people who work on the Hill — who Kalu calls “The people who do the grunt work” —  were eligible for the list, no representatives, senators, lobbyists or other supporting characters.

The Fab Fifty list-makers swear that none of the time that they spent on their pet project interfered with their working hours, and they have tried to keep their boss’s names out of all of this. “I’m not sure if my member has caught wind of it,” Kalu said, “but the senior staff in my office have and they’ve been really supportive.” We promised Kalu we wouldn’t say his boss’s name, but anybody on the Internet could figure out pretty easily that he works for the only senator who has already constructed a mausoleum inscribed with his accomplishments to date. This whole vanity thing really has legs, huh.

Rep. Martin Heinrich, #1 on The Hill's 50 Most Beautiful list

Kalu was adamant that his list was a more democratic version of The Hill‘s list. ”We tried to include everyone, no matter race, religion, size, whatever; beauty is in the eye on the beholder, and everyone is fabulous in their own personal way.”

But how can a list that excludes more people than it includes be more democratic?

“We spend about three months on our list,” said Kitto of The Hill‘s list. “We talk to a lot of people, we consider a lot of nominations when we’re putting it together.”

If the Fab 50 list didn’t add much to The Hill‘s list as far as democracy is concerned, it still made a sizable splash in certain DC circles. Kalu and Andrews ultimately included themselves on the Fab Fifty list (because what’s more fabulous than compiling a list of fabulous people?), but not in the top ten. Their list was announced this weekend at a Bacardi-sponsored party, as advertised on the blog FamousDC.

And with the sponsorship came compromise: The ’50 Most Fabulous’ became “Bacardi Flavor’s 50 Most Beautiful People on The Hill under 30.” Kalu posted party photos taken by Elite DC magazine on his blog, A Slice of Snob.

The invitation to the launch party read:

This is a personal invitation to join DC’s tastemakers and socialites on Saturday, August 15, 2009 at Lounge 201. Ego on The HIlls will be hte first event of a 12-part monthly series branded as PARTYONTHEHILLS. The Hills is an eclectic blend of those who work hard and those that party weven harder. Join Kelechi Kalu and famousDC as we celebrate Bacardi Flavor’s “50 Most Beautiful People on the Hill under 30″ … Those in attendance will dress “Hollywood Chic” and “NYC Trendy.”

After all that, the complete list has not even been posted online yet (Kalu sent it to Mediaite in an Excel document). The complete list of Kalu and Andrews’ 50 Most Fabulous people was posted on Politico on Monday.

“We didn’t do this to rival The Hill‘s list,” said Kalu. “That wasn’t our goal.”