Sunday, September 07, 2008

This Is A Con-Law Prof? Huh?

clipped from blogs.wsj.com

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’

It's not Congress that's going to stop him. It's this thing he's yet to read called the second amendment. Good Lord.

The Vapors Of OReform

clipped from hotair.com

That assumes two facts not in evidence at all — that Palin was a safe pick,
and a darling of the party. I doubt seriously that McCain took very much advice
from the RNC on any aspect of his campaign, let alone allow them to dictate his
running mate. Palin has endeared herself to the party in Alaska in the same way
McCain has endeared himself to it nationally. It’s an absurd statement and shows
how desperate Axelrod has become.

As I mentioned earlier, this has to be a major attack line for Team McCain.
Only one ticket in this race has a record of independent thought and action.
Obama/Biden are machine politicians, never rocking the Democratic boat. Both
McCain and Palin have actual experience doing what Obama only talks about. When
pressed on this point, the only defense Team Obama has are a few co-sponsorships
that didn’t even warrant a roll-call vote. Obama has never risked his standing
in the party to champion any sort of reform or any kind of legislation at
all.

Saturday, September 06, 2008

NYeT Watch

The Times cited a "series of disclosures [that] called into question ... how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket." As it turned out, though, it was the Times that failed to investigate thoroughly. One of its "disclosures" was false, as the paper admitted this morning:

An article on Tuesday about concerns over Senator John McCain’s background check of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, his choice of running mate, misstated the history of her political party affiliation. As The Times has since reported, she has been a registered Republican since 1982; she was not for a couple of years in the 1990s a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, which advocates a vote on whether her state should secede.

I don't think the McCain campaign needs any lessons from the New York Times on how to conduct a proper factual investigation.

Even If I Want To Take Them Away?

So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have
the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote
for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen
back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’


Oh, I think they heard the words coming out of his mouth.  But maybe they have also captured the flavor of all the other words and flip-flops, especially with the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Washington DC gun ban.  Here is Jacob Sullum at Reason:

Obama's past positions on gun control and recent statements about gun rights provide little reason to believe he takes the Second Amendment seriously. And as I've argued,
it's hard to see what meaningful restrictions the Second Amendment
imposes on gun control if something like the D.C. law can pass
constitutional muster.

The First Today

Joe Biden is the first politician in the history of the sport to benefit from a sweetheart real estate deal.  OK, make that the first I have noticed today:

While their earnings probably would not be enough to purchase their
Greenville estate today, the Bidens have managed to live in such
splendor partly because of two financially rewarding real estate deals
with political supporters.

In 1996, Biden sold a home in
Greenville for the asking price of $1.2 million -- more than six times
what he paid two decades earlier -- to John R. Cochran III, a top
executive at the MBNA credit card bank that was a longtime political benefactor.

Using
profits from that sale, Biden paid $350,000 cash to real estate
executive and developer Keith D. Stoltz for 4.2 vacant acres -- a long,
narrow lot a few miles from Biden's old home. Stoltz had bought that
same lot five years earlier for the same price.

The "Author"

clipped from www.redstate.com

Here's a perfect example for you to consider: McCain-Feingold.
The BCRA legislation is famous because of the two principal
sponsors - but did you know there were 41 other co-sponsors in the
Senate alone? They were:


Bayh, Bingaman, Boxer, Cantwell, Carnahan, Carper, Cleland,
Clinton, Cochran, Collins, Corzine, Dayton, Dodd, Dorgan, Durbin,
Edwards, Feingold, Feinstein, Graham, Harkin, Jeffords, Johnson,
Kerry, Kohl, Landrieu, Leahy, Levin, Lieberman, Lincoln, Mikulski,
Miller, Nelson, Reed, Reid, Sarbanes, Schumer, Snowe, Stabenow,
Thompson, Wellstone, and Wyden.


There's no question that Barack Obama has worked to get bills
passed, in the state Senate and in the Senate. But if Hillary
Clinton had claimed during the primary campaign to have "taken the
initiative to reform Washington by authoring McCain-Feingold,"
something tells me Obama would have pounced on that as a vast
exaggeration - which, of course, it would be.

Deathwatch

clipped from www.redstate.com

About two weeks ago, I wrote in this space that some very large
tectonic plates were starting to move far below sea level in the
financial world. That was based on some unusual patterns I was
seeing in the overnight repo and money markets.

I guessed (but had no information to confirm) that whatever was
in the breeze had something to do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
the pseudo-private corporations that together own or guarantee
about half of all US mortgages, and today account for about 70% of
newly-originated mortgages.

This weekend, there are many reports that Fannie and Freddie
will have their managements and directors dismissed, their equity
extinguished (or nearly so), and enter what's called a government
conservatorship.

In essence, the firms will be allowed to continue their current
business operations, but under government control, and their
shareholders will be wiped out.

11

clipped from www.redstate.com

That interview was more than enough to
convince Jennifer Rubin
that Governor Palin's role as commander
of the Alaskan National Guard adds more gravitas to the Governor's
experience:


I confess I thought the “head of the National Guard” argument
was a weak one in defense of Sarah Palin.  But this is
actually a fairly illuminating interview which explains what she
did and how she did it.  You actually learn something about
Palin and how she operates.

This is one of those instances where the talking point sounds
goofy on the surface, but actually has some merit.


Obama has no similar experience to prepare him to be commander
in chief.

Deploying C-17's and helicopters?!

This is the left's worst nightmare amp'ed up to 11...

The OProblem


Remember this questioning (from Chris Matthews of all people) in an exchange
with Sen. Kirk Watson, Obama's former colleague in the Illinois legislature:


Matthews: Name some of Obama's legislative accomplishments. . .

Watson: Well, uh, you know, what I will talk about is what he's offering to
the American people.

Matthews: What has he accomplished, you've said you support him. Sir, you
have to give me his accomplishments, you support him for President, you're on
national television. Name his legislative accomplishments, Barack Obama,
sir.

Watson: Well, I'm not going to be able to name you specific items of
legislative accomplishments.

Matthews: Can you name any? Can you name anything he's accomplished as a
Congressman? Watson: I'm not going to be able to do that tonight.

Matthews: That's a problem isn't it?


Celebrities can win elections, but can they get anything done?

On How To Lose

clipped from beldar.blogs.com


arguments about his experience versus Palin's only highlight the contrast
between his limited time in government and the decades McCain has spent in
Washington.


I think that second paragraph is bang-on accurate, but underestimates the
danger. It's not just that Obama himself can't be dragged into the
debate. It's that anyone attacking Gov. Palin can't help but raise
questions about Obama's experience, whether they want to or not. That's the
strategic advantage that McCain seized: McCain is already bulletproof on the
experience/achievements criterion, whereas all of the experience (at least as
measured in calendar years) in the Democratic ticket is in the second
slot. There's no way that anyone can talk about Gov. Palin's
experience without the top slot of the Dems' ticket jumping into the
conversation — and if Gov. Palin is perceived to even be close to a tie
with Sen. Obama on experience, then Sen. Obama has lost the
argument.

OPrompterless Gasses

In addition to ditching the prompter he went into slightly more detail than he
chose to give when a lot more people were watching at the Ocrapolis.
His key points of evidence, in support of his claim that “global warming is a
serious problem, you know, it’s not just some tree-hugger, uh, sprout-eating
liberal thing,” are that “the polar ice caps are melting, the oceans are
warming.”

Caps, not cap, and melting. Sure, global warming computer models tell us that a greenhouse warming signal is polar amplification, both poles. And our lyin' eyes tell us the Antarctic is steadily gaining ice mass, and the other end of the planet has a mere 700,000 square miles more ice today than a year ago today. And even NPR has openly struggled over what to call global-warming-without-the-warming after learning that while computer models were still telling us the oceans should be warming, the actual observations were telling us that they were not. Possibly this was Obama’s avatar speaking?

Friday, September 05, 2008

Where Have You Been?


Thus, href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/jpodhoretz/27911">John
Podhoretz
suggests the following response to Barack Obama's question of
McCain: where have you been for 26 years:

Here’s where I have been. I changed campaign-finance law. I changed
telecommunications law. I took on the tobacco companies when other Republicans
wouldn’t. I took on the cable companies when they wouldn’t let people choose
what channels they might want to watch. I saw a standoff in the Senate on
confirming judges and I changed a standoff into a bipartisan agreement. I took
on the earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere and the breaks for oil companies you,
Obama, voted for in 2005. And I helped change the war in Iraq from a defeat into
what appears to be a victory. Where have you been for 26 years?

The "Working" Class

Beyond that, most of these people build their lives around their work, drawing both much of their self-worth and quite a bit of satisfaction from it. This is the difference between a job and a career.

To be sure, there are those who are rich even though they don’t do much.  Some people win the lottery.  Others inherit lots of money because someone related to them worked really hard and left it to them.  But the vast majority of those who inhabit the upper reaches of the income distribution are there because they’ve worked really hard for a long time.

Somehow, though, they’re not part of the “working class.”

Experience You Can Laugh At

clipped from jimtreacher.com

It occurs to me: If Obama's experience in this presidential campaign is itself to be considered one of his qualifications for the Oval Office, what are we to make of his performance over the last few days? Is this an indication of how he deals with adversity? Because -- and this may be unfair -- it seems to me that over the next 4 years, the President of the United States will face much tougher challenges than watching a cute lady with glasses on TV.

The Platform

Governor Palin's political and media enemies have not yet drawn blood. Thinking to condemn her, for example, the director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance told the Associated Press: "Her philosophy from our perspective is cut, kill, dig and drill." Reasonable people might construe that as a compliment. Indeed, it sounds like a winning slogan, if not a platform.

Down They Go

clipped from online.wsj.com

The GOP machine has crumbled. Attorney General Renkes resigned. Mr. Ruedrich was fined $12,000. Jim Clark—Mr. Murkowski's lead pipeline negotiator—pleaded guilty to conspiring with an oil firm. At least three legislators have been convicted. Sen. Ted Stevens is under indictment for oil entanglements, while Rep. Don Young is under investigation.

Throughout it all, Mrs. Palin has stood for reform, though not populism. She thanks oil companies and says executives who "seek maximum revenue" are "simply doing their job." She says her own job is to be a "savvy" negotiator on behalf of Alaska's citizens and to provide credible oversight. It is this combination that lets her aggressively promote new energy while retaining public trust.

Today's congressional Republicans could learn from this. The party has been plagued by earmarks, scandal and corruption.

Ethics AND free enterprise. What a concept.

Well just the only thing standing between the world and the return barbarism. And integral to the very founding of our country.

And of course, it's only Republicans that need to be taken down. The ODaley machine is pure as the driven snow...

And perhaps you're in a bridge shopping mood today also?

If we don't stand up and take the corruption down then it will take us down. To the depths of the rest of the world.

That ODaley wants to respect us. Because corruption is all they respect. And he knows how to give it to them.

Absorbed

clipped from ace.mu.nu
Later this month it's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It's one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar, so I'd be obliged, please, if you'd all stay at home, turn off the TV and refrain from your usual activities. Ten days after that it's Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when Jews fast and spend the day in synagogue. So I've also asked my Times colleagues not to work then. And I will be mightily offended if I learn afterwards that any of them have been eating.

You might not think I am being serious. But if I was Head of Democratic Services at Tower Hamlets Council in East London, I would be. Last week John Williams e-mailed each of the borough's 51 councillors with a similar instruction.

For the duration of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, they are, he told them - every one of them, Muslim, Catholic, Jew or atheist - to behave during council meetings as strict Muslims.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

All Out Of Caribou


I've had three Palin  posts vanish into the ether.
Clearly the software works for MSNBC. So I'm going to stop trying to post and go
to bed. Longer thoughts tomorrow. The chase:  I thought she did a great
job. Quibbles here and there but few and small. I thought the sarcasm was
fine.

She was put on this earth to do two things: kill caribou and kick butt. She's
all out of caribou.

A Terrible Resolve


North of the Border, Andrew Coyne at Macleans isn't necessarily
predisposed to liking Palin, but he admits he href="http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/09/03/the-best-natural-speechmaker-since-reagan/">witnessed
something very impressive
, calling her "the best natural speechmaker since
Reagan":


It was that good. No, she’s not qualified, and the substance was thin, but my
God — that was perhaps the greatest bit of political theatre I have ever
witnessed. Her critics in the media and in the opposition may regret having
piled on quite so enthusiastically, and with so little heed for who they hurt —
or angered. Watching the tumultuous, ecstatic reaction in the hall, I was
reminded of the famous words of the Admiral Yamamoto after Pearl Harbour: “I
fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a
terrible resolve."

Steyn On The MSM On Palin


I would like to thank the US media for doing such a grand job
this last week of lowering expectations by portraying Governor Palin - whoops, I
mean Hick-Burg Mayor Palin - as a hillbilly know-nothing permapregnant ditz,
half of whose 27 kids are the spawn of a stump-toothed uncle who hasn't worked
since he was an extra in Deliverance.

How's that narrative holding up, geniuses? Almost as good as your "devoted
husband John Edwards" routine?

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

His ODizzyness Obamacles

clipped from hotair.com

Anderson Cooper asked Barack Obama last night to answer the claim that Sarah Palin has more applicable experience than he does. In response, he completely ignores Palin’s status as governor, and then makes the claim that a campaign counts as executive experience:

Update: The McCain campaign has responded to Mark Halperin at Time:

“For Barack Obama to argue that he’s experienced enough to be president because he’s running for president is desperate circular logic and it’s laughable.  It is a testament to Barack Obama’s inexperience and failing qualifications that he would stoop to passing off his candidacy as comparable to Governor Sarah Palin’s executive experience managing a budget of over 10 billion dollar dollars, and more than 24,000 employees.” —Tucker Bounds, spokesman John McCain 2008


By that standard, anyone who ever ran for any public office has executive experience — and that also kills their own experience argument against Palin anyway.

Whatever

Anbar province is now under the control of the Iraqi Army. From Amit Paley in the Washington Post:

The U.S. military on Monday handed the Iraqi government responsibility for security in Anbar province, the former stronghold of the Sunni insurgency that has now become one of the safest areas in country.
But, whatever. Maybe someone will unearth another Todd Palin DUI arrest from the 1980s and we can get back to real news.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Getting To Know Sarah

Who knew, right? Still, nice catch by the RJC, who just sent this out over email. Hey - what's that over Governor Palin's shoulder?

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Been There, Done That

First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.

Likewise, on abortion, we're often told it's easy to be against it in principle but what if you were a woman facing a difficult birth or a handicapped child? Been there, done that.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Apparently You Have To Read The British Press ...


It has been established that href="http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=303605575673142">the" Frank"
in Mr Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father
, was Frank Marshall Davis, a
radical activist and journalist who had been suspected of being a member of the
Communist Party in the 1950s.


href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/barackobama/2601914/Frank-Marshall-Davis-alleged-Communist-was-early-influence-on-Barack-Obama.html">Frank
Marshall Davis, alleged Communist, was early influence on Barack Obama 
Telegraph

[...]

New details about a black poet in Hawaii who was a key early influence in
Barack Obama’s life can be revealed by The Telegraph.



In a surviving portion of an autobiographical manuscript, Mr Davis
confirms that he was the author of Sex Rebel: Black after a reader had noticed
the “similarities in style and phraseology” between the pornographic work and
his poetry.

s “ a voyeur and an exhibitionist” who was “occasionally mildly interested in sado-masochism”, adding: “I have often wished I had two penises to enjoy simultaneously the double – but different – sensations of oral and genital copulation.”
... to keep up with the latest about the Manchurian Candidate.

The (Saudi) Manchurian Candidate (Part 9,586,452)

clipped from pajamasmedia.com
href="http://townhall.com/blog/g/c2df500d-0189-47d8-a454-54de9f6584c3">Townhall
links to a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EcC0QAd0Ug&eurl=http://townhall.com/blog">video
in which civil rights activist href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Sutton">Percy Sutton
claimed he was asked by a certain “Dr. Khalid al Mansour”, supposed adviser to
‘one of the richest men in the world’, to write a letter of reccomendation on
behalf of Barack Obama to help him gain acceptance to the Harvard Law Review
many years ago.  Mansour was raising money for Obama at the time,according
to Sutton, a circumstance strange enough in itself.
A search on the Internet showed another  href="http://www.africaventurepartners.com/news_p.htm">Dr. Khalid Abdullah
Tariq
href="http://www.africaventurepartners.com/news_p.htm">
Al-Mansour
’s whose biographical details fit the Sutton profile much
better.


Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tario Al-Mansour is an internationally acknowledged
advisor to Heads of State and business leaders in Africa, Asia, the Middle East
and North America. He has been actively involved in structuring investments and
joint ventures worldwide for over 35 years.

But In Our Time

clipped from pajamasmedia.com
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSSEO2172420080826">North
Korea
has decided to suspend the decommissioning of its nuclear
facilities because the United States has insisted on verification before
removing it from the list of the state sponsors of terrorism.  This new
crisis comes on the heels of Georgia and events in Pakistan. About the only good
news is ironically from Iraq. What’s going on? The question is whether we are
still in the End of History, at “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to
slow, and our planet began to heal,” or whether the stars are veiled; a
sleepless malice is stirring, and a new menace is taking shape, not for the last
time but in our time.

We Know

clipped from pajamasmedia.com

But the digs didn’t end there.

Clinton very pointedly mentioned crushing “credit card debt.” And Biden is pretty much a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delaware’s many credit card companies. Clinton knows that. The media know that. And pretty soon they’ll remind you of it, too.

And then there was the claim about Obama’s “acute grasp of foreign policy,” which is sure to remind folks that Obama was against the surge before he admitted it’s working, and that Biden — like Hill — voted for the Iraq War.

The secret to Bill’s speech was found right in the beginning when he smiled and told the crowd, “You know, I love this.”

We know, Bill. We know.

So Did I

During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up “a gentleman named William Ayers,” who “was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.” Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama’s answer: “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me.

At the conclusion of his 2001 Times interview, Ayers said of his upbringing and subsequent radicalization: “I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.”

Funny thing, Bill: one night, so did I.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Blink. Blink. Blink. Crazy As A Cuckoo Clock. Blink. Blink. Blink.

So it's beyond dispute: Nancy Pelosi really does not understand that natural gas is a fossil fuel. This is truly shocking. Pelosi is one of the principal people responsible for setting the nation's energy policy. In the House of Representatives, she has blocked exploration and development of natural gas resources as well as other fossil fuels, thereby raising the price of gasoline at the pump and energy costs across the board. And she has wielded this immense power while being ignorant of the most basic facts about energy. She is not qualified to carry on an intelligent conversation about energy, let alone set the nation's energy policy.

BROKAW: Sounds like we’re going to have offshore drilling.

PELOSI: No, no, no.

Jimmah: Unable To Distinguish


but not before it paved the way for the removal of the Shah and the
installation of Khomeni in Iran. Andrew Young, the Carter-appointed United
States Ambassador to the United Nations, described Khomeini as “some kind of
saint.”

As href="http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/4884331.html">Matthias
Küntzel recalls
, Young was not alone in his disposition toward Khomeni.
Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was also
favorably disposed toward Khomeni, since he seemed to Brzezinski to represent an
effective barrier against Soviet influence. “We can get along with Khomeini!”
was the motto in that summer of 1979. We contend with the consequences even
today.

Quoted by Horowitz and Johnson, Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan provided the
most href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2006/12/13/cstillwell.DTL">trenchant
critique
of Jimmy Carter's foreign policy. Moynihan said of Carter in 1980:
"Unable to distinguish between our friends and our enemies, he has essentially
adopted our enemies' view of the world."

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Not Fair To Stupid People

As David Freddoso noted in his book, Obama represents the merger of two of the worst aspects of Democratic politics --'60s radicalism and corrupt Chicago machine politics.  With the addition of Slow Joe Biden to the ticket, Obama has added to his unsteady candidacy an epic amount Beltway cluelessness and arrogance unsupported by anything except frequent flier miles and Delaware's love for a chuckle-headed fellow with a big smile.

Rob Long asks "Isn't [Biden] sort of the stupid person's idea of the smart person's candidate?"  Yes, he is.  But that's not fair to stupid people.  Even stupid people who watched Biden embarrass himself during the Alito hearings --remember the "I hate Princeton" moment followed by the donning of the Princeton cap?-- know that Slow Joe is all tenure and no talent.

We Can Thank Him For PGP?!

clipped from news.cnet.com
By choosing Joe Biden as their vice presidential candidate, the Democrats have selected a politician with a mixed record on technology who has spent most of his Senate career allied with the FBI and copyright holders, who ranks toward the bottom of CNET's Technology Voters' Guide, and whose anti-privacy legislation was actually responsible for the creation of PGP.
But back to the Delaware senator's tech record. After taking over the Foreign Relations committee, Biden became a staunch ally of Hollywood and the recording industry in their efforts to expand copyright law. He sponsored a bill in 2002 that would have make it a federal felony to trick certain types of devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs. Biden's bill was backed by content companies including News Corp. but eventually died after Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, eBay, and Yahoo lobbied against it.

California Luddites (Part 9,365,632)

Reader LM741N, pointing to a report released this month by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, writes "Gallium Arsenide has now been listed as a carcinogen. Given the increasing usage of gallium arsenide, the main constituent in LEDs, and their recent championing as more efficient light sources in recent news stories and Slashdot, there may be significant environmental concerns as related to their disposal. Morover, workers in industries using the substance may be at risk of cancer as well."

Betting On Wind

Obama had another terrible week.  His paean to the Chinese (he praised their "vastly superior" infrastructure on Thursday) his baffling equation of Russia's rape of Georgia with America's overthrow of Saddam, the new focus on his vote against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, his close ties with unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and convicted felon Tony Rezko --all these things crowded in on him as he ran out of time to make a crucial decision.  Pushed to the wall, he picked an empty suit like himself, a nice enough fellow who has done one thing well in his entire life, which is win elections in Delaware.
For Obama, it is all about politics and words, elections and poses.  Slow Joe is the perfect running mate on a perfect ticket for a party betting on wind to solve the energy crisis.

Slow Joe In His Own Words

Biden, on a post-debate appearance on MSNBC, October 30, 2007: “The only guy on the other side who’s qualified is John McCain.”
Biden appearing on The Daily Show, August 2, 2005: “John McCain is a personal friend, a great friend, and I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off, be well off no matter who...”
On Meet the Press, November 27, 2005: “I’ve been calling for more troops for over two years, along with John McCain and others subsequent to my saying that.”
Biden on Meet the Press in 2007, on Hussein’s WMDs: “Well, the point is, it turned out they didn’t, but everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them. He catalogued — they catalogued them. This was not some, some Cheney, you know, pipe dream. This was, in fact, catalogued.
On Meet the Press, January 7, 2007
“If he surges another 20, 30, or whatever number he’s going to, into Baghdad, it’ll be a tragic mistake

Did I Forget To Mention That He's The Senator From MBNA?

clipped from pajamasmedia.com

It is unfortunate that if you were an underdog and looking for help from Senator Biden in getting out from under a load of debt by filing bankruptcy, you were given the back of his hand. It seems one of Senator Joe’s major contributors through the years was the bank holding company MBNA, the world’s largest issuer of credit cards who was pushing bankruptcy reform that would have been favorable to the credit card industry. Biden was one of the bill’s biggest proponents — and why not? MBNA executives contributed hundreds of thousands to his campaigns. And then there was the rather cozy personal relationship between Biden and MBNA executives:

The relationship was also personal, with an MBNA executive’s buying Biden’s house at a favorable price, and one of his sons taking a job for a time as an MBNA management trainee, as the Wilmington News-Journal reported. Hey, it’s a small state.