This is the first edition of Blogenberg News Links. Each week we’ll compile, in no particular order, a few stories that we’re following that you may not have noticed, that we’ve found interesting and that provide insight into communications, media, business and culture.

• True to form, Marc Gunther takes a provacative look at business and the potential costs of carbon emissions caps.
• Seth Godin sort of perfectly captures the definition of good writing.
• NPR covers the impact of blogging on sports reporting in “Blogging the Name of the Game in Sports Coverage.”
• Conde Nast Portfolio explains why CEOs should be aware of what their kids post online.
• Newsweek predicts the “Return of the Experts” will define the future of the Web.
• The Harvard Business Review podcast looks at how to make your business a learning organization.
• Brandstorming explains that a small business’ online marketing budget is better spent on blogging than Pay-Per-Click advertising.
• From Good Experience, a look at the ultimate example of corporate citizenship.

Brands are sticky. Visceral reactions, emotions, gut instincts, what was spinning in your head the last time you were exposed to the brand — all have much more to do with how you respond to that brand than intellectual thought. That’s the mistake too many people make when it comes to PR and marketing: it’s the feeling, stupid, not the thought. And that’s the problem Barack Obama has right now and, unfortunately, for quite some time to come.

When it comes to marketing (and politics is the ultimate in marketing) feelings trump intellectualizing every time. People feel a brand. They feel a candidate. Relatively little deductive reasoning enters into their personal equation. And what they feel is the sum of lots of different feelings felt at different times. Permanently added into the sum of feelings people have toward the Barack Obama brand are the controversial words of his former pastor. For many people, that’s not going away. For them, it will color, at least a bit, how they forever view Barack Obama even if they forget all about Rev. Wright.

The big problem for Barack Obama? Brands are sticky. You can’t intellectualize away what sticks to a brand. That’s how the Obama team is trying to deal with the Rev. Wright problem. That’s all they can do, and they are doing it very well. Problem is, brands are sticky — for months to come.

“In our circles, people really equate wealth with status,” a mother of one of my son’s lacrosse teammates said, in a tone that suggested she was telling me something new.

“Really, I never noticed,” I said, my response dripping with sarcasm. “And they hide it so well,” the sarcasm dripping faster.

Where we live, my boy’s two main sports - lacrosse and ice hockey — are not solely the province of wealthy white people, but they do disproportionately populate the stands. One thing’s obvious to me: most of them look, dress, talk, probably even smell alike. One thing I don’t get: why do they want that?

The more financially successful these people get, the more they create an insular world. Whether they would admit this or not, it’s clear to me that their greatest ambition for their children is to see them grow up, go to school, get a job, get married, join a country club (oh glory be!), get old, and eventually die without ever building any real relationships outside of the world where everybody looks, dresses, talks, and probably even smells alike.

And I just don’t get it. I’m getting more successful (thanks to hard work and faith in God). I keep trying to expand the colors of my world - not aspire to blandness cradle to grave.

(For the record, I very much like the mother I refer to here. I just will never get that world.)

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Bonus Blogenberg: Yesterday, President Bush publicly thanked the Secretary of the Treasury for working over the weekend. Wow, as a small business owner I cannot imagine somebody working on a weekend. I hope the Treasury Secretary will be able to get some needed rest and recover.

Two recent parenting episodes from inside my Toyota (I note I own a Toyota since Toyota just won it’s first NASCAR race and that makes Blogenberg even cooler!):

Blogenberg: Sure, you can go over Katie’s [my almost 14-year-old son’s adorable girlfriend] Friday night, but I have to talk to her parents first.

My almost 14-yeard-old son: Something unintelligible into his cell phone.

Son [to me]: What are you going to say to Katie’s mom?

Blogenberg: What do you think I’m going to say? I’m going to say [in my best Dick Vitale voice — think very loud and irritating], Hey, Katie’s mom, BABY, how ya’ doing BABY?!?!

Katie, my almost-14-year-old boy’s adorable girlfriend, was still on the cell phone, listening. Oops.

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Blogenberg [driving my almost-14-year old daughter and friend to watch a boy’s soccer game] : So have you decided to say yes to Connor’s asking you to “go out”? [They call it “going out.”]

My almost-14-year-old daughter: We are going out, Dad.

Blogenberg: Oh, okay.

Daughter: He’s like some big soccer star. He’s on the boys U.S. National team.

Blogenberg: Oh, you can definitely go out with him!

Pause.

I mean, is he a nice kid?

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Blogenberg Oxymoron of the Day: “High-end prostitution ring.”

Blogenberg goofy media moment of the day: Fox News Channel “fuzzing” out the faces of the call girls shown on the website of that “high-end prostitution ring.”

Blogenberg has visitors worldwide. Many have been clamoring to see what I look like (not really, but I like to pretend). So we’ve decided to invite Blogenberg visitors to an exclusive pre-release viewing of the new Rosenberg Communications marketing video. That’s right, this is the first public showing and you are walking down the red carpet!

You see, it’s not a hard sell. It’s meant to give viewers, in just 2 1/2 minutes, a sense of what we’re about and what it’s like to work with us. Hopefully you and other reviewers like it.

I know you’re excited to see what Blogenberg looks like (not really, but I like to pretend).

I’ll say this — boy do I have more empathy for people I media train than I ever did before!