Dear Mr. Kristol, thank you for your concern…

I noted over at Balloon Juice your concern about Obama’s VP pick. I’m sure you have the very best of the Democratic Party in mind when you puke all over your Cheetos stained keyboard and this comes out.

Thank you Mr. Kristol for your concern and for your transparent attempt to stir up shit with the PUMAs. Of course they are all of about ten people strong, and while I’m sure they will be a reliable McCain voting bloc, I don’t know that they will be tipping any elections anytime soon.

Might I also share with you my concern about McCain and the GOP?

I’m concerned that McCain’s VP might not be strong enough to pull McCain’s head out of his ass. It’s jammed in there past the shoulders. While I’m sure checking for colon cancer at his age, is a good thing, it’s hard to answer the red phone at 3am, when you can’t move your arms.

I’m also concerned that the eventual VP pick might be a fag, an adulterer or someone with a wet suit and dildo fetish. Any of these will be very unsavory with the base of your party. You have to admit, the modern GOP is known for it’s lewd conduct. Please tell John to be careful in his pick.

I’m very, very concerned that Mr. McCain will look at his Naval experience as enough. What he really needs to pick is another Naval vet or trucker to help him. See both are very adept at tying and untying knots. It’s going to take at least two skilled knotsmiths and a lot of time and patience to unfuck this country. I fear that Mr. McCain may not have the patience or the time left on this earth to unfuck this country in a proper manner.

Thank you for your concern, and I hope you note mine.

McCain’s VP…

While the political world is still buzzing about Obama/Biden, which I’ll admit had me glued to MSNBC most of the day. I decided to get in front of the bus and take a stab at picking McCain’s VP pick. I’ll try to do this with a straight face, but no promises.

Now McCain has an advantage, since he knows who Obama picked. +1 McCain, however, I think the Biden pick and recent news narrows down McCain’s picks. Here are the names I hear most often: Ridge, Pawlenty, Lieberman, Romney, Crist, and the Huckster. Let’s start with the one that makes me the most nervous.

Huckabee. He’s likable (hell I even like him), popular with the religious nut jobs, however he’s never held a national office. Given McCain has the “experience” this might not be a big deal. His ideas and policies are scary as fuck, and are well hidden behind the “aw shucks, I’m just a bass player” persona. Huck being one melanoma away from the presidency scares the living shit out of me, and he’s personable enough to hide his radical agenda from most of the American people. Again on the negative side, this pick does not push the “maverick” meme McCain is running on. However, I think he’s the strongest answer to Biden.

Probability of being the pick: High

Crist has cred, yet again no national experience, then there’s the whole adoption by gays thing that’s an albatross around his neck.

Probability of being the pick: Low.

Pawlenty, is a governor, and America likes to elect governors to the presidency, yet he’d be in the veep spot. Young, counter-balances McCain’s age nicely. He has a decent story, but is not very experienced. Again, probably not a problem for McCain. However, I don’t view him as the traditional attack dog the VP is. Of course McCain seems to be his own attack dog, so maybe that doesn’t matter either. I’m gonna rate him:

Probability of being the pick: High

Ridge, Lieberman and Romney I’m going to lump together in a category I’d call “OH PLEASE PICK ONE OF THESE”

Lieberman, while as hawkish as they come is, socially pretty liberal.
Ridge, is pro-choice

Either of them would infuriate the wing-nut base that McCain has worked so hard to get behind him, even if they are tepidly so. However, both would promote his “maverick that works across this isle” theme that he’s trying to ride. The media would love it, the independents probably too, but he’d alienate his base. Either would be a bold choice but would give the Dems a stick to poke at the base with. In either of these two cases you’d pit the traditional media vs the base, I’m pretty sure there are more wing-nuts out there than independents and media folk. I think the odds are slim, but you never know:

Probability of being the pick: Medium

Lastly, my favorite. Romney. Romney flip flops so hard he’s in danger of loosening up his botox treatments and that in and of itself makes him McCain’s soulmate, even if McCain doesn’t like him. He’s a favorite of the right wing media, but is a Mormon and well, lets face it, after the seven houses dust up the last thing McCain needs is another rich white guy on the ticket. I gotta believe that where ever Mitt ranked on the scale before McCain’s gaff, he’s fallen quite a bit since then. But, for whatever reason, he’s a popular dude in some influential circles. McCain would pick him, I’d think, if he could shore up some support for McCain, and after last week, I’m not sure that K-Lo’s undying love of Romney is enough to overcome Mitt’s richness and whiteness. A blogger can dream though right?

Probability of being the pick: Low.
Probability of me wanting him to get the nod: OMFG PLEASE PICK MITT

Summary:

In the end I’ll give the nod to Pawlenty, for the youthfulness and with that, probably makes him more “mavericky” than Huck

Seven Kitchen Tables.

Biden starts of as the Obama attack dog in fine form:

Biden says that while, “at kitchen tables like mine,” Americans worry about their shrinking incomes, “that’s not a worry [McCain] has to worry about.”

“You have to think about which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at,” Biden says, going on to quote McCain’s praise of Bush.

Perfect. Quotable, sharp to the point. The exact type of thing that the Obama camp needs. Calling out McCain for giving into the right-wing, swift-boat, style politics was excellent as well.

**Update**

I missed this the first time around…Biden going straight after McCain’s military service as a qualification to be President:

These times call for a total change in Washington’s world view. These times call for more than a good soldier, they require a wise leader.

Very, very nice.

Obama/Biden 12 hours later.

Aside from the Ron Fournier hatchet piece, the media both traditional and new, seem pleased with the pick of Biden. I am too. I think (and I’ve mentioned it several times in this blog) that the strongest contribution Biden will make to the campaign will be as attack dog.

Obama doesn’t seem to do attack dog very well, as evidenced over the last couple of weeks. When Obama did start hitting back, ever so slightly, the traditional media and others start howling that Obama is going negative. Abandoning his “new politics”. It’s been a Catch-22 for the Obama campaign and an obvious point of weakness. One that McCain seems to have been adept at exploiting. Biden changes the calculus. Obama gains a running mate who can and is good at attacking, and leave Obama above the fray to do what he does best. Inspire and pimp his policies.

The Obama text message that never was.

I’ve seen people at Kos and Balloon Juice pissed at Obama that they didn’t get their text message and instead found out about Biden via the traditional media. If someone from Obama’s camp leaked then, yes they have legitiment reason to be pissed.

However as it stands, it is rumored to be either a “high level Democrat” (likely) or a Secret Service Agent (unlikely). Either of those, would not be Obama’s fault. Thus anger is misplaced.

I have seen people feeling they were being screwed, and promising to withhold support for Obama. Something along the lines of broken promises, or as I just listened to Lynn Sweet on MSNBC say…a “broken social contract”. Really?

Look, this is transparently simple. The text messaging thing was a way for Obama to get your cell phone number to add to his ground game. Nothing more. If you are really that bummed out or surprised that the pick leaked before the text went out then you don’t know politics. If the leak pissed you off to the point that you are going to vote against, or withhold support from Obama, then you need to seriously check yourself and remind yourself of the disaster of the last seven and a half years.

And, if the leak did come from the Obama camp (which I HIGHLY doubt, they’ve been way too disciplined), then that’s a major gaff and they’ve shot themselves in the foot needlessly. Thankfully it was on a Friday night, and won’t hit the RADAR between Biden and the Dem convention starting Monday.

Biden it is.

Great choice. Not only will he be an awesome “bad cop” to Obama’s good cop, but he foreign policy chops are well known, and well, he’s not Hillary.

The run up to the pick was also well played. Although as I heard it called on Gene Burns show on KGO, he asked if anyone had received their texts. Answer was no, seems someone in the Dem camp may have leaked it early. Whoops!

McCain Has Seven Houses, Obama Eats Arugula

Who cares. Yeah I know what Obama’s doing he’s trying to reflect the “eliteism” charge on to McCain. Yes McCain couldn’t tell you how many houses he and Cindy own. Yes, by the current standards McCain is more “elite” (I will give props to Obama on the quick turn around).

However “elite” is what we should be aiming for in a president, and the problem is the whole definition of elite has been twisted so much we’re giving Webster an aneurism. Athletes aspire to be elite, better, stronger, faster than their competitors. Politicians should too, they should be smarter, more knowledgeable and agile than their opponents. In a perfect world, I suppose, they would be and would be elected for their skills.

I believe we’re entering what Obama once termed the “silly season”. When the candidates and media are arguing over who’s more “elite” (read: is more well off) and who’s the bigger patriot. It’s stupid, unproductive, uninformative and how Bush got elected, which got us into this mess in the first place.

If you’re voting based on who has the least amount of houses, or what their salad choices are you’re an idiot and should have your right to vote revoked. The media that pimps this garbage, well…that’s a whole other story. I’d appreciate it if we could stick to the issues, but apparently that’s too much to ask.

Russian Missiles in Cuba vs. American Missiles in Poland.

Differences…discuss.

Oh wait there really are none.

h/t commenter w vincentz at Balloon Juice.

…and the neocons fan the embers…

…in the Caucuses. Uber NeoCon and PNAC member Fred Kagan on the News Hour tonight.

And I also think that we recognize the necessity of providing Georgia with defensive weapons systems that will protect — I’m sorry, Poland — that will protect Poland itself from possible Russian attacks of the sort that we’ve seen in Georgia. So that’s why I think we threw in the Patriot missile batteries, as well.

Hell give some to Georgia too, and if you order now, we’ll throw in a battery of Patriot Missiles free as our gift to you for shopping at US Weapons-R-US.

John Issacs responds:

but it certainly also gives the lie to the Bush administration’s case that it’s making for many months, many years, that this missile defense system that we’re going to deploy in Poland was directed at Iran and certainly not at Russia.

Well, I think what Condoleezza Rice said today, the Polish leaders, some American politicians have made it clear, this missile defense system fuels the Russian fears of what they’ve been saying all along, that the missile defense system is really directed at them.

Pretty much a big o’ duh in my book. The only country that has the capabilities to shoot missiles as us is Russia. Oh but what about Iran? Issacs goes on to say:

They’ve been trying to develop long-range missiles, but they have — there is no yet — there’s not yet any Iranian missile that can hit very long distances.

Then we have this exchange:

FREDERICK KAGAN: No, because the agreement is to develop and deploy the system. And there is an Iranian threat. The Iranians have just recently been testing Shahab 3 missiles that have a range of 2,000 kilometers, which is far in excess of what they need…

JOHN ISAACS: Testing, but not successfully.

FREDERICK KAGAN: Well, good heavens, shall we wait until they’re actually landing in Europe? I mean, the problem with the defensive system, as we’ve repeatedly made clear, is that it takes time to build and develop a system. And the time to be doing that is before your enemy actually has the capability.

First we have wingnut argument #1 here. ZOMG!!! They MIGHT be able to do something BAD in the future, so we must over respond NOW. Second, even Kagan says the system doesn’t work, so why are we poking a stick in the eye of the Russians by signing this agreement now?

Kagan gets then gets all Sandbox Commando on us:

But the key thing here is that the notion that this system is somehow directed at Russia is absolutely laughable. The geometry is wrong. The U.S. missile defense program, which has been showing the Russians virtually the blueprints and diagrams of this system all along, has shown very clearly that interceptors launched from this spot will not be able to hit Russian ICBMs that are launched from Central Asia and that fly very close to the North Pole.

Note: dickweed, we have missiles that can launch from the US and hit Russia, I’m sure then that we can launch a missile from Poland and hit whatever we want in Russia. Of course even John McCain is skeptical of the system as Isaac’s points out:

In fact, the two Armed Services Committee, the Senate and the House Armed Services Committee, including the committee on which Senator John McCain, the Republican almost nominee, presumptive nominee serves, voted to cut money and prevent any actual construction of the missile, until it’s built first and it’s tested first.

Although I’m fairly confident McCain will flip flop on that vote at his earliest connivence. Isaac then cuts to the quick of of the issue

So we’re talking about tests two years away. There’s no reason to sign an agreement today, except we wanted to respond to what happened in Georgia and we wanted to ratchet up the rhetoric and the moves.

And I think it’s very dangerous from what Russia is saying, and it’s very dangerous what the U.S. has been doing.

Russia is obviously a key to dealing with among others, Iran. Kagan dismisses the importance of a relationship with Russia in favor of wracheting up tensions and in the same breath gets the facts of the Georgia conflict wrong:

So I’m not — I’m far from convinced that Russia has been a particularly useful partner to begin with, but I would point out that we were not the ones who began this.

The Russians started all of this with an absolutely illegal invasion of Georgia….

No…Georgia started this, Russia undoubtedly over reacted, but Georgia threw the first punch. Kagan ends with this peach:

Now, I think it’s entirely appropriate in that context for us to make it clear that we intend to defend our NATO allies.

With WHAT FUCKING ARMY??? You dolt, you personally, you directly have absolutely decimated our armed forces with your needless invasion of Iraq. You. Fucked. Us. And as this country continues to poke Russia in the eye with a stick, what are we going to do when they punch back? What are we going to do when they pull the stick out of our hand? Nothing. We will do nothing, because we can do nothing, and you are a directly are responsible for this situation.

And bringing it back to the election, you know what? John McCain shows ever indication of continuing this reckless shoot first and talk later type of foreign policy. The world is very unstable at this moment. We don’t need someone with a hair trigger and a mouth to match.

I admire Rush Limbaugh.

As a broadcaster he really is top notch. I say this as a radio nerd. I love radio and its history. He is however a very disgusting and lonely person, who I’d feel bad for if he wasn’t such a vile hypocrite.

Today:

Rush Limbaugh said that “it is striking how unqualified [Sen. Barack] Obama is and, and how this whole thing came about with, within the Democrat Party. I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.” Limbaugh went on to say: “I think this is a classic illustration here where affirmative action has reared its ugly head against them.

I’d might be outraged, but instead I’ll sit smug, knowing how miserable his life actually is, and that it will remain that way until he dies.