From Politico:

A classic Joe Biden ad from 1988, which begins: “The White House isn’t the place to learn how to deal with international crisis, the balance of power, war and peace, and the economic future of the next generation. A President has got to know the territory, but that’s not enough.”

Experience was a major theme of Biden’s pitch in the primary (take the above, and add 20 years), and it’s a contrast they’ll have to aim to avoid if he’s Obama’s running mate.

If Biden gets the nod, you can bet the GOP will run that ad again and again and again.

Governor Rendell (D-PA) says he’ll vote for Hillary at the convention.

Operation Rescue puts out a flier entitled, “Is it Immoral to Vote for Obama for President?”.

Scrappleface demonstrates how unfair the Saddleback forum was for Obama:

That interchange clearly demonstrates how the event was biased against Sen. Obama, according to his spokesman.

“Of course McCain looked good,” the anonymous Obama aide said. “He didn’t have to worry about how his answer would be perceived. He didn’t have to work to recall his talking points. He didn’t have to think, or even try to look like he was thinking. All he had to do was blurt out what he believed. Clearly, this gave him an unfair advantage, and we think the American people will see this for what it is…another Republican smear tactic.”

The oil bubble continues to burst.

New blog: New Catholic Politics. We’re taking over, ya know? Promise we’ll only make you recite the Creed once.

Nevada Pundit notes that the National Security issue is wide open, again, and it works for McCain.

La Shawn Barber takes on the notion that race will be a big factor in whether Obama wins or loses.

Other than that, not much to talk about this morning.

The problem, my friends, is that Obama grew up in the political hot-house of the kook left, and now has to try to fit into mainstream America, and it ain’t working:

In response to the new evidence which reveals that Senator Barack Obama has misrepresented his position regarding his opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, the Obama Campaign has continued to deny that the Illinois state bill included a neutrality clause.

On Thursday, the ChicagoTribune.com posted a “fact check” on its website regarding Sen. Obama and his opposition to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) when it was proposed in the Illinois Senate. The site quotes a Susan B. Anthony List press release from August 12 as stating:

“Official legislative documents released this week show that Obama in fact presided over a committee hearing where “neutrality clause” language – identical to the federal language – was added to the Illinois version of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. After voting in support of the “neutrality clause,” Obama then joined fellow Democrats to oppose the bill, killing it by a vote of 6-4, even after the addition of the ‘neutrality clause.’ The bill Obama killed is nearly identical to the federal version of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act signed by President Bush in 2002 – legislation Obama has said he supports.”

ChicagoTribune.com quoted the Obama Campaign’s response as:

“There are major differences in state and federal bills, including the fact that the federal bill included a ‘neutrality clause’.”

President of the Susan B. Anthony List, Marjorie Dannenfelser responded to the article saying, “The Obama campaign thinks if they continue to repeat their flimsy story about Barack Obama’s opposition to the common sense Born Alive Infant Protection Act that their thin explanation will become true. The reality is that actual legislative records directly contradict their story.”

She continued, “Here’s the truth: Barack Obama killed the commonsense Born Alive Infant Protection Act in the Illinois Senate, and his campaign continues its game of hide and seek. That’s because his position is heartless. There is no baby at any stage – even born accidentally – that he finds worth protecting. Where is his heart for the downtrodden when it comes to the most vulnerable human beings? It is no wonder he cannot admit to the truth of his ‘leadership’ as a State Senator.”

Heartless, indeed. As a matter of fact, that is what the whole so-called “pro choice” position is – heartless. To think that abortion – the killing of an unborn child – is a good or even reasonable reaction to the temporary condition called pregnancy is absurd. It is only the love of lies and the cowardice of our times which allows this position to be professed, and the people professing it to continue on in politics as if they held reasonable opinions worthy of merit.

What I wonder is just when sensible Democrats will realise that they have signed on to a monstrous crime – there is a great deal to be said for such Democrats ditching the far left and setting up a Christian Democratic party…a party which will advocate for great amounts of social welfare, but which won’t be beholden to the wickedness of abortion, nor in thrall to those who seek by one means or another to undermine the family and traditional morality. Welfare has all sorts of problems with it, but someone who wants to help the poor has his heart in the right place – but no heart at all if an alleged concern for the poor is joined to an unconcern for the women and children who fall victim to the abortion industry.

The news story:

…McCain plans to celebrate his 72nd birthday on Aug. 29 by naming his running mate at a huge rally in the battleground state of Ohio, Republican sources said.

That’s a week from Friday, and the day after his rival, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, accepts the Democratic nomination at a 70,000-person spectacular in a Denver stadium.

The campaign has begun building a crowd of 10,000 for Dayton, Ohio, according to an organizer. McCain is scheduled to appear with his running mate at a large-scale event in Pennsylvania shortly thereafter.

Senior Republicans are in the dark about who he’ll name, although they say former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty are prime contenders after a trial balloon by McCain gave him very negative feedback about the idea of picking an abortion-rights running mate such as Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania and the first secretary of homeland security.

Sources close to McCain say he has wrestled with the choice, torn between a high-stakes, high-reward pick like Ridge or Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman — the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000 — or a safer and more conventional selection such as Romney or Pawlenty.

Friends say he has yet to make a final decision, and is not expected to do so until after Sen. Barack Obama announces his choice.

That last bit is probably correct – its better for McCain to wait until Obama’s pick is known that way both the VP nominee and the manner of presentation can be geared for maximum positive effect. Other than that, I really don’t have a clue whom McCain will pick…I still have my slight hopes of Palin (yes, I’d still love Jindal, but I want to “save” him for 2012 or 2016), but McCain has kept this so close to the vest that I doubt more than one or two of his closest aides really know where he’s going.

My only worry was the trial balloons McCain was floating on a pro-choice VP…its not that any pro-choice GOPer is absolutely unacceptable, but that such a choice would put at risk the growing, yet still fragile, conservative movement support for McCain, espcially amongst conservative Catholics and Evangelicals. In the end, of course, the VP pick is only of marginal importance – there aren’t that many voters, if any, who will merely vote based on the VP nominee, but for both candidates the VP selection is important in what it will say about the men, themselves. Public perception will decide this race – and the man the public perceives as the most “Presidential” will win – so the VP pick won’t secure victory, but combined with other things it can go a long way towards helping a candidate to defeat.

That was one of the questions at Saddleback, and McCain just flat out answered it – the way he failed in his first marriage. How many of us, I wonder, have the courage to go on television and give that clear a statement? Its on my mind a bit now – of course, the first thing I have to do is go through that mental Rolodex O’ Errors and try to sift down decades of sin into something which is clearly a great moral failure. In the context McCain used, it would have to be something I did which I knew in advance was the wrong thing to do, and yet I went right on and did it, anyways; or something that you know you should of done, but you slunk away from it like a coward. Its one thing to acknowledge in public one is a sinner (heck, from time to time we Catholics even do that in Church – “I confess to you, Almighty God and you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned…”), but there is a gulf between a generalised statement of error and a specific acceptance of responsibility for failure.

Among my errors, I have these two things which weigh upon my mind:

1. Back when I was in the Navy, I stumbled across an attempted racial discrimination against a shipmate, and did nothing about it. Just happened to go into the room just as two very senior white enlisted men were in the process of attempting to screw out of a plumb assignment a black shipmate in favor of a white shipmate. I can take the excuse of youth, but that really doesn’t cut it – I should have done something specific about it, but I didn’t. The screwing failed, probably on account of my interruption of it, but that doesn’t lessen my failure an iota.

2. For very many years, I refused to forgive members of my family for their many failings, as if I were perfect and not in need of forgiveness, too.

As noted, there are many other errors – but my sins of commission pale in comparison, at least in many cases, with my sins of omission. You wish you could go back in time and do it right – but, you can’t; while your sins can be forgiven, they can’t be unmade. Always better to strive to get it right from the start, and forgive those around you who fail, because if you didn’t fail today, then its really more a matter of God’s grace rather than any perfection on your part.

I’ve seen this, too – the accusation that McCain cheated, as explanation for why he had a superlative performance while Obama bombed at Saddleback; didn’t know, however, that Andrea Mitchell was also a kook:

…Andrea Mitchell on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” suggested the Obama campaign felt John McCain “may not have been in the cone of silence” during Saturday’s Saddleback Civil Forum, “and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were.”

Although she claimed this was being “[put] out privately” by Obama’s people, CNN is now reporting that his campaign is “not pursuing whether McCain heard any of the other questions,” and that they’re “assuming McCain had the same information they did.”

So where did Mitchell get this idea from? Might it have been a Daily Kos blog posted at 9:22 PM PDT Saturday entitled “McCain cheated? proof he knew the questions ahead of time”…

If you go to the Kos entry in question, you’ll find that the conviction is that McCain had the questions, with the only doubtful thing being whether Obama had them, too.

What seems to have flummoxed Mitchell is just how prepared McCain was – in contrast to Obama. It just will never occur to an MSMer that the GOPer might be the smarter guy…and as far as Obamessiah is concerned, the MSM can’t imagine anyone holding a candle to him, let alone beating him like a drum. I still suspect that some day the MSM and the left will realise that it is they who aren’t all that bright – you’d think that after nearly 8 years of having GW run rings around them they’d figure this out, but the level of obtuseness on the left and in the MSM is extraordinary; its like armour plate…if we can figure out how it works, we can use it to up-armour the Army’s humvees and make them really impervious.

This, though, is just a slight taste of what we can expect if McCain goes on and wins the election – the level of hatred and paranoia on the left will make the past 8 years seem like a tea party. Remember, the left is not just convinced they will win this year, but that they will win big…anything short of a massive victory will be viewed with suspicion, while an Obama loss will be considered proof that we’re living under a dictatorship.

Ed. Note: This counts as “What Media Bias? Part 121”.

Amie Parnes and Ben Smith put a bright face on what may end up quite a catastrophe for Obama, Hillary and the Democratic Party:

Rep. Loretta Sanchez says she’s happy for the chance to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Democratic National Convention — and she predicts that as many as half of the Democrats in the House could join her.

Just how many former Clinton supporters will vote for the former first lady during the symbolic first ballot is anybody’s guess, but each of them will be called upon to do so — whether they want to or not.

On Friday, the Obama campaign confirmed that the floor vote in Denver, intended to assuage Clinton supporters still stewing over her narrow loss, will be conducted as a state-by-state roll call…

…For Obama’s camp, the roll call is a ritual that will defuse any potential tension with Clinton or her supporters without affecting the outcome or the theater of Obama’s dramatic nomination.

Said Sanchez: “I believe there are a lot of supporters for Hillary among the superdelegates, especially now that they’ve agreed to place her name in nomination. I think half the House Democrats would probably be Hillary supporters, especially women. … I felt she was the most experienced and the best candidate and I still feel that way.”…

…“It’s a bizarre strategy,” said one Democratic strategist of the roll call. “It could backfire and show that her influence is waning. Chances are, she’s not going to have as many delegates vote for her on the floor as she had in the primary.”…

…“My boss is totally conflicted about it — and pissed Hillary is putting us in this position,” said a congressional staffer for another New York House member. “We still haven’t made up our mind and I don’t know when we are going to.”

Another New York delegate, speaking on condition of anonymity, predicted that as much as 30 percent to 40 percent of the New York delegation would pick Clinton over Obama during the symbolic vote.

Obama’s decision to accept a roll call vote, which came after weeks of talks with the Clinton camp, doesn’t mean he’ll let the process get out of hand, observers say.

“The convention is about nominating Barack, so his people want to speed through the vote as fast as possible so it won’t take too much TV time,” said a Democratic delegate who plans to vote for Clinton. “They also want to avoid a scenario where she’s leading at any point.”(emphasis added)

I highlighted “symbolic” because I’d like to point out that its not symbolic at all – they are real votes being cast at a real convention. The last bit I highlighted shows the danger – the delegates can pretty much do what they want, especially the super delegates, and while the official word is that it’ll just run smoothly through the roll call, the fact of the matter is that no one knows for certain what will happen.

Don’t forget: Obama did not want this roll call. In fact, I’m extraordinarily surprised he allowed it and I can only explain it as a gigantic error on his part, or a subterranean current of pressure from super delegates growing increasingly doubtfull on Obama’s long term prospects. When you add together the disappointment a lot of Clintonites feel, Obama’s inability to generate any significant polling lead over McCain and Obama’s disasterous appearance at Saddleback, the ingredients are all there for the super delegates to come to the realisation that they’ve picked the wrong candidate. Also good to keep in mind that the Clintons never do anything other than actions they believe will advantage themselves – they didn’t set up this roll call in order to help Obama.

There’s really no other way to put this:

A quick reading of the measure that will go before San Francisco voters in November to decriminalize prostitution easily could leave you with the misimpression that the measure is an exercise in fairness that demands that prosecutors go after men who abuse prostitutes and implement policies “to reduce institutional violence and discrimination against prostitutes.” A careful reading of the initiative, “Enforcement of Laws Related to Prostitution and Sex Workers,” however, shows a measure that shields child prostitution and traffickers of human beings.

“If I had just heard from the proponents, I would probably vote for it myself,” said the Rev. Glenda Hope, whose San Francisco Network Ministries helped found the Tenderloin AIDS Resource, in the mistaken belief the measure is meant “to protect women.” But as the executive director of SafeHouse, a residential center that helps women get off the streets, Hope knows too much.

…the San Francisco ballot measure completely ignores the prostitution of children. The measure simply states, “Law enforcement agencies shall not allocate any resources for the investigation and prosecution of prostitutes for prostitution.” Astonishingly, there’s no exemption that encourages police to enforce the law for minors.

If the measure passes, the city is likely to become an international haven for pimps who peddle girls and boys, and perverts seeking sex with minors.

And where does that leave Bay Area youth? “They want new and young,” Jasmine, a former teen prostitute from Oakland who now volunteers for the nonprofit SAGE Project, which fights sexual exploitation, explained to me.

Thus the tail end of the sexual revolution – a ballot measure to allow men (and it will be almost exclusively men) to legally procure boys and girls for sexual gratification. When you de-couple sex from marriage and child-rearing, this is precisely what you get as was predicted back in the 60’s when the concepts underlying the sexual revolution first gained a mainstream foothold. This is absolutely no surprise at all – its digusting, but not a surprise. The piece goes on to note that some are expecting the ballot measure to pass rather handily as San Francisco is a “sex-positive” city – meaning, presumptively, that there is so much selfishness and demand for personal gratification that San Francisco may very well cut itself entirley off from civlization and descend to a level of depravity untouched since the worst of Nero.

You see, back when it was first seriously proposed that we de-stigmatize pre- and extra-marital sex and all manner of sexual deviation those who opposed it weren’t just a bunch of squares with sexual hang-ups who just didn’t want anyone having fun. Not, it wasn’t like that at all – the concept was opposed because it was already known what would come of it. It was known – not guessed-at, not theorised over; known. This is because, waaaay back when, Christianity was (among other things, of course) the cure for a society which had allowed sexual licentiousness to descend to such a level that child-bearing and -rearing was considered a burden and personal sexual gratification trumped all, no matter how sterile and un-fulfilling it steadily became. Christianity knew this in 60, 560, 1060, 1560, 1960 and will continue to know it in 2060 – sex is a powerful thing, and unless carefully contained within proper limits this great gift becomes a taskmaster and a means of self-destruction.

And now San Francisco proposes to legalise the worst of it – because people want it and want it now and exactly how they want it and everyone else can go to Hell as far as they are concerned, San Francisco may do this horrible thing. And then we’ll await the inevitible lawsuit, claiming that the right to privacy means that not only San Francisco, but the whole nation must turn a blind eye to the sexual exploitation of youth. How it will come out will remain to be seen – unless, of course, it turns out there is some remaining level of human decency in San Francisco and this terrible, anti-human initiative is defeated.

UPDATE: And the Democrats endorse.

I think that Russia’s adventure in Georgia just might turn out to be a fiasco:

Ukraine offers satellite defence co-operation with Europe and US

The proposal, made amid growing outrage among Russia’s neighbours over its military campaign in Georgia, could see Ukraine added to Moscow’s nuclear hitlist. A Russian general declared Poland a target for its arsenal after Warsaw signed a deal with Washington to host interceptor missiles for America’s anti-nuclear shield.

The move came as the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, signed a cease-fire deal that sets the stage for a Russian troop withdrawal after more than a week of warfare with its neighbour Georgia.

Russia has created a mountain of crisis, looks like it will obtain a mole hill of territory, and has angered just about everyone in Europe. Not a very slick move on Putin’s part. The analogy here is the Agadir crisis of 1911 – Germany stamped on its neighbor’s foot and the only real result of the aggressive act was a stronger anti-German alliance.

One thing we have to keep in mind here is that Putin and his gangsters aren’t all of Russia. While we do have to react in various anti-Russian ways, we must always keep the door open to more sensible Russians who may be able to force Putin out at some future date and re-set Russia on the patch of democracy.

Oh, as an aside: don’t you lefties who fought so hard against SDI feel like, well, a bunch of stupid fools? You know, like a bunch of suckers who fell first for communist propaganda about it, and now have fallen for Putin’s semi-fascist propaganda about it? Man, its gotta suck to be wrong about everything, all the time.

I missed all of Obama and part of McCain, but the part I saw of McCain was very good – clear, humorous at times, willing to stake out strong positions. While I don’t want to comment too much until I have a chance to read the transcripts, I thought this news report interesting in the contrasts between the two men:

DALLAS – U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama side-stepped a pointed query about abortion on Saturday by “mega-pastor” Rick Warren during a televised forum.

Asked at what point a baby gets “human rights,” Obama, who strongly supports abortion rights, said: “… whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity … is above my pay grade.”

He went on to reiterate his view that it was important to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who followed Obama onto the stage of the nationally televised event, was more blunt and more emphatic.

He said a baby’s human rights began “at the moment of conception … I have a 25-year pro-life record.”

Sorry, but that was a bit gutless on the part of Obama – he either believes an unborn child has no rights (and thus that elective abortion is ok), or he believes that the unborn child has rights (in which case he would have to switch to the pro-life side, and thus not be nominated in Denver). Obama’s dodge on the issue is a disgusting bit of political gamesmanship – he doesn’t want Joe Average to understand the fanatic pro-abortion positions he’s staked out but he also doesn’t want to give even a hint of pro-life opinion for fear of angering that tiny, but noisy and well-funded, minority in the Democratic party who view abortion as some sort of sick sacrament in the Church of Liberalism.

McCain, on the other hand, went right at it and told everyone where he stands – you might disagree with McCain (and he’d be the first person to say thats ok with him), but you can never oppose McCain because you are unsure of what he believes. In my view, always take the man who has the courage to stake out a position – even a wrong position is better than refusal to take a position.

UPDATE: Mark Hemmingway over at NRO’s The Corner chimes in:

I don’t want to get to overheated about what occurred tonight, but I do think McCain had a clear and decisive victory over Obama. It all comes down to something that Phil Bredesen, the Democratic governor of Tennessee recently said about Obama: “Instead of giving big speeches at big stadiums, he needs to give straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart about how he would improve their lives.”

By that standard, McCain did extremely well and Obama did very poorly. McCain’s answers were direct, confident and, most importantly, serious. When asked about what leaders he would consult as president, he first suggested Gen. Petraeus, architect of the surge, who he correctly praised as one of America’s all-time great military leaders. By way of contrast, Obama suggested he would seek out the advice of a typical white person, er, his grandmother and his wife Michelle, who’s still trying to decide whether she’s proud of her country.

When asked “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?,” McCain answered “At the moment of conception.” Obama’s answer here was flaming-dirigible bad:

Whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is, you know, above my pay grade.

That spectacularly inept metaphor is going to haunt Obama throughout the rest of the campaign. News flash: There’s not a job on the planet above the pay grade of the President of the United States.

As I said, I didn’t see any of Obama – anyone here see Obama and have a comment on his performance?