My thoughts on some of the names being thrown around :

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius - My favorite of all the short-listers. She’s a reliable progressive with bipartisan cred, she’s got ties to Ohio, and she’s damn good at governing in general. Granted, she gave an underwhelming State of the Union rebuttal earlier this year, but the Democratic response is always stiff and tiresome. I think she perfectly complements Obama’s message of working across the aisle and getting things done. The only downside I could see is if Clinton supporters might take umbrage at the fact that Barack Obama would pick an accomplished woman who isn’t Hillary to be his running mate, but if Hillary Clinton is the only female who deserves consideration, then their immaturity is just carefully-disguised sexism. Sebelius is awesome, regardless of gender.

Sen. Joe Biden - This may be one of those predictions that comes back to bite me in the ass, but here we go : There’s no way Barack Obama will pick Biden. Not gonna happen. Biden would make a terrific surrogate, but he’s too much of a loose cannon for the hyper-disciplined Obama campaign. The first time Biden says something stupid, the McCain campaign will have a field day. I don’t think Obama wants to deal with the hassle of having a foot-in-mouth VP.

Sen. Evan Bayh - Ugghhh…He’s considered the “safe” pick in much the same way that Mitt Romney was considered “presidential”. In this instance “safe=boring”. I don’t think he really brings anything to the table and the fact that he was a major player in the rush to war in Iraq is enough to make him a non-starter.

Sen. Chris Dodd - Better than the other Senators being considered, but I think Obama will shy away from picking a Senator since he’ll need every Democratic vote he can get if he wants to get anything done next year.

Gov. Tim Kaine - He’s the one I think is most likely to get the nod, but I worry about Obama picking a pro-life Democrat who has really pissed off his base. I think the Obama campaign is probably so desperate to win Virginia that it’ll tip the scales in Kaine’s favor, which is a shame because I think the obvious pander VP pick is a mistake. Kaine isn’t the worst candidate, but he’s far from the best.

John Edwards - A few months ago, I was hoping for an Obama/Edwards ticket. What a difference a couple of weeks makes, huh?

Tom Daschle - I’m not so sure the guy who oversaw the most shameful Democratic majority in the Senate should be rewarded. His tenure as majority leader makes Harry Reid look like FDR.

Hillary Clinton - Too much drama. The last thing the Obama campaign needs is another three months of coverage about how he doesn’t get along with the Clintons.

Wes Clark - I think he’d be a fantastic choice, but I don’t think the campaign would want to risk another controversy like the recent one regarding Clark’s comments about McCain’s time as a POW. Which is a shame because (1) Clark was right and (2) they could turn this into a good cop/bad cop dynamic and let the retired general defuse McCain’s bizarre “prisoner of war tourette’s” shtick. Also, according to Wes Jr., the VP thing ain’t happening.

I guess we’ll find out tomorrow or Thursday who’s getting the nod. Who do you support?

Insomnia meets YouTube and the result is a video of my puppies Winston and Olive having a conversation about John McCain’s reaction to the Georgia/Russia conflict :

YouTube doesn’t allow outside links in their annotations, so for more info, read this and this.

Earlier today, I just got around to commenting on the recent shooting at a Unitarian church, noting :

I don’t think it’s fair to say that people like Limbaugh and O’Reilly are directly or even indirectly responsible for the shooting, but it’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention that the limits of what’s considered acceptable commentary among mainstream conservative commentators has moved to the extreme right over the past 10-15 years. Sean Hannity has a book titled “Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism”, Michael Savage describes liberalism as a “mental disorder” and considers us “the enemy within”, Jonah Goldberg’s latest book features a Hitler-mustached happy face under the title “Liberal Fascism”, Ann Coulter’s best sellers describe liberals as being “Godless” and guilty of “Treason”, Bill O’Reilly routinely compares liberal activists to the KKK and Nazis, Glenn Beck describes Barack Obama as a “marxist”, etc. If this is the voice of mainstream conservatism, is it any wonder that the extremists on that side would grab a gun and shoot up a liberal church?

I’m starting to see a pattern here :

The chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party died Wednesday, hours after a shooting at the party’s headquarters, police said. Police block off the streets surrounding the state Democratic Party headquarters Wednesday in Little Rock.

Chairman Bill Gwatney died at 3:59 Wednesday afternoon after a gunman entered his Little Rock office and shot him several times in the upper body, Little Rock Police Lt. Terry Hastings said.

While we should reserve judgment until we know more about the shooter, when a party chairman gets murdered by a stranger who walks into his workplace demanding to speak to him, I think it’s safe to assume politics might be involved. Moreover, regardless of whether or not this guy was a crazy loner, actions like these don’t occur in a vacuum. I mean, is anybody really surprised when violent lunatics erupt from a mindset in which this passes for humor? (h/t)

Hawaii - Here’s a little rule of thumb : If the Brady Bunch went there, it’s not “exotic“.

Renewable Energy - The Olympics seem to be playing John McCain’s negative ads in a non-stop loop, but the ad’s use of windmills hides the fact that John McCain has zero credibility on wind power. Even Thomas Friedman called him out on it. More here.

Georgia - Ugghhh…it’s like our foreign policy “experts” are playing checkers while the rest of the world is playing chess.

Church Shooting - After a lunatic shot up a Unitarian church a couple of weeks ago, I was kinda hoping that more media outlets would pick up on the fact that it was motivated by the right-wing hate speech that pervades our media. I don’t think it’s fair to say that people like Limbaugh and O’Reilly are directly or even indirectly responsible for the shooting, but it’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention that the limits of what’s considered acceptable commentary among mainstream conservative commentators has moved to the extreme right over the past 10-15 years. Sean Hannity has a book titled “Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism”, Michael Savage describes liberalism as a “mental disorder” and considers us “the enemy within”, Jonah Goldberg’s latest book features a Hitler-mustached happy face under the title “Liberal Fascism”, Ann Coulter’s best sellers describe liberals as being “Godless” and guilty of “Treason”, Bill O’Reilly routinely compares liberal activists to the KKK and Nazis, Glenn Beck describes Barack Obama as a “marxist”, etc. If this is the voice of mainstream conservatism, is it any wonder that the extremists on that side would grab a gun and shoot up a liberal church?

Race-Baiting - It’s becoming increasingly clear from McCain’s pattern of filling his ads with Barack Obama juxtaposed with images of white women that Obama is being “Corkered“. Even more insidious is the fact that McCain’s campaign seems to be employing a strategy of using just enough racist whistle-calls to provoke a response from the Obama team, thereby giving them another opportunity to accuse Obama of playing the race card.

Edwards - The infidelity is heartbreaking, but wasting his anti-poverty center’s money on foreign policy efforts? I hate to think that John Edwards is as insincere as his detractors have suggested all along, but there you have it…

The Clinton Memos - So her campaign turned out the be as rudderless and unethical as we suspected? Shocking! Though I do think it’s kinda funny to see Clinton loyalists crawl out of the woodwork to insist that she would have won if had happened. Of course, this ignores the fact that Clinton didn’t just lose in a vacuum, she got beaten by Barack Obama.

More Olympics - A negative ad during the Olympics? I can’t think of anything more antithetical to the spirit of the Olympic games than to take advantage of the massive audience to score cheap shots at your political opponents. Also, did you catch the multiple shots of George W. Bush checking his watch during the opening ceremonies? Stay classy, GOP.

More of this please…

I also love this new Barack Obama ad :



This is exactly the sort of contrast Obama should be making. McCain wants to criticize Obama for lacking experience, but McCain has been in Washington for 26 years while our energy prices have soared, our deficit has exploded, our environment has become more polluted, etc. It seems as if McCain’s experience consists of mostly sitting on the sidelines and watching problems get worse.

Not to pat myself on the back, but does this ad :

…remind you of this post I did a couple of years ago?

The Only Campaign Ad the Democrats Should Need

Gas Prices :

Oil Company Stock Prices :




Their Campaign Contributions :

I hope Barack Obama runs that commercial in prime time every day between now and the election.

Wait a sec….I thought Iraq was responsible for the anthrax attacks :

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Is there any proof at all that Hussein is involved in the anthrax scares?

MYLROIE: There is no proof that Saddam is involved in the anthrax scares, but proof is different from evidence. Proof, according to the dictionary, is conclusive demonstration. Evidence is something that indicates, like your smile is evident of your affection for me. There is evidence that Iraq is behind the anthrax scares. First, it takes a highly sophisticated agency to produce anthrax in the lethal form that was in the letter sent to Senator Daschle. Not many parties can do that. Second, there is an additive in that anthrax, bentonite, which is used to cause the anthrax to not stick together, and float in the air. Iraq is the only party known to have produced anthrax with bentonite.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Should the U.S.take action against Iraq?

MYLROIE: Yes. It is necessary for the United States to take action against Iraq. The 1991 Gulf War never ended. We continue it in the form of an economic siege whose origins lie in the Gulf War. And also, we bomb Iraq on a regular basis, and Saddam continues his part of the war in the form of terrorism. It is unlikely that that anthrax will remain in letters. It is likely that it will be used at some point, for example, in the subway of a city, or in the ventilation system of a U.S. building. Saddam wants revenge against us. He wants to do to the U.S. what we’ve done to Iraq. One way he can do that is terrorism, particularly biological terrorism.

Then again, who would believe the “crackpot” theories of Laurie Mylroie? Well, there’s this guy :

At the Pentagon, Wolfowitz was an insistent force behind an invasion of Iraq, bringing it up at the first National Security Council meeting of the Bush administration, months before Sept. 11. For years he had been a firm believer in the crackpot theories of Laurie Mylroie, a neoconservative writer, who argued that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and even the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

…and these guys :

For those of you playing “six degrees of neoconservatism”, Laurie Mylroie also co-wrote a book with Judy Miller about - you guessed it - Saddam Hussein.

Now that the neocons have mostly moved on the greener pastures, I’m sure we can expect the “evidence” that Bruce Ivins was an Iranian double-agent to surface any day now…

I like to think that today’s Southern California earthquake was God’s way of giving the United States a high-five for the indictment of Ted Stevens.

When it comes to political campaigns, a lot of effort goes into making sure the candidate is presented well, but it seems like the McCain campaign is asleep at the wheel. For example, take a look at this photo of Barack Obama appearing before a crowd of 200,000 today in Germany :

It’s a striking image that really captures the enthusiasm Obama has generated not only here in America, but throughout the world. John McCain, on the other hand, chose to make an appearance today on the sidewalk in front of a German restaurant, beneath a sign that reads “Fudge Haus”.



Equally embarrassing was when McCain canceled his press availability yesterday (lest he answer questions about being a total dick) only to pop up in the “Dairy Delights” section of a local grocery store :

As an Obama supporter, I couldn’t dream of a better contrast. Barack Obama addressed the world today from Berlin, echoing speeches by Ronald Reagan and John F Kennedy. Yesterday, John McCain stood between the cheese and the orange juice and tried to explain why he couldn’t remember when the surge happened. If things continue like this until November, I might be laughing too hard to make it to the polls.

It seems to me that if you want to turn the GOP into the Grand New Party, they’re going to need some grand new people, preferably ones that aren’t also suckered by the same old ideas that Republicans have convinced themselves are intellectually sound and morally righteous (”cutting taxes increases revenue”, “corporations can be trusted to self-regulate”, “America has the best healthcare system in the world”, “government ‘bailouts’ to moneyed interests are morally superior to government ‘handouts’ to people living in poverty”, etc.).

One of the things that has helped the Republicans attract voters over the years is the sheer confidence they have in their own ideas compared to the wishy-washy pandering of the Democrats (did somebody say FISA?). But that confidence can be a two-edged sword when public opinion turns against you. You can either be resolute and stick to the positions that are increasingly unpopular or you can, as Grand New Party suggests, reinvent the party and try to claim credit for ideas that you’ve spent the last few decades criticizing Democrats for.

Or the entire GOP can just take a cue from John McCain and change their positions whenever it suits them.