Palin

The Mav fools everybody and comes up with the perfect pick.

She's dynamite, super-smart and with guts to burn.

Obama's big speech has been trumped into a fading memory, Biden just an old-politics, blabbering albatross.

From here on, it's going to be fun.

Byron

Lord Obama

This is getting really bizarre (see here). Does anyone doubt that if all the delegates were released at this point Hillary would win by a mile? BHO is a one-trick pony with trick that went stale about six weeks ago. He got in just under the wire as the primaries ended, but now he's caught with too much time left until the General Election -- and, worse, he's saddled himself with Joe Biden as his running mate. It's all unraveling. The media have protected him until now, but they will smell blood in the water pretty soon. Look out then, because he's got lots of baggage that has so far sat there untouched.

The plan to have Obie speak like Socrates in front of a phony Greek Temple is Twilight-Zone surreal. Will he wear robes? He's fending off allegations of being nothing but a puffed-up celeb with zero accomplishments, so Mr. Judgment does this? Maybe it's not a temple, but a theater instead, and he's the doomed figure in the Greek play, unable to stop himself from doing the fatal thing.

Or maybe we're in the next Mel Brooks movie. "The Producers" was built around a scheme to purposely stage a flop -- but it turns out to be a hit. Obama never imagined he could get the nomination this time around, was looking ahead 4 or 8 years to when he'd be seasoned, ready, and had earned the right to be easily ascendent. But thanks to Bill Clinton's big mouth and to the well-funded anti-war nut brigade on the party's left fringe, Hillary got the rug pulled out and, incredibly, Obama ended up nominated! So, suddenly, there he is: Giant ego, some fast-fading rhetorical flair, and no experience or qualifications for the job. From here out, the screenplay writes itself.

As she leered at some guy, Mae West once famously said, "You can't be first, but you can be next." Maybe the Greek Temple thing makes the most sense, after all: The gods are about to punish Obama for being first when he should have been next.

Byron

Slow Joe

The addition of Joe Biden is being seen as bringing foreign policy credentials to an Obama ticket that otherwise has none. Biden, you see, brings experience and judgment. This is very funny.

Here is a Biden Blast from the very recent past, on the most important foreign policy/national defense issue of our time: The Biden Plan for Iraq. I assume the McCain campaign will spend plenty of time reminding everyone about this stunning demonstration of experience and judgment: Slow Joe opposed the surge, and he instead advocated Iran, Turkey, and Syria as parties to "peace talks" aimed at dismembering the country!

This is classic Biden Brilliance (tm), apparently well-intentioned but half-baked and completely wrong about absolutely everything. His plan would have created an al Qaeda/Hezbollah enclave tied to Syria and fully dedicated to the destruction of Israel, an Iranian puppet state run by Shiite fanatic Muqtada al-Sadr and his criminal militias, and the Kurds left to the tender mercy of the Turks. The surreal bit about a "central government" coordinating this mess in some kind of federal system is simply goofy.

But even that awful scenario is ridiculously over-optimistic. Long, long before any such system could have been established, Iraq would have descended into a genocidal civil war that, abetted by Biden peace-talkers Syria, Iran, and Turkey, might have lasted for a generation. The derangement of Iraqi society would have been unspeakably tragic, the human toll staggering to contemplate, and the geopolitical ramifications beyond calculation.

Everyone, but especially the people of Iraq, can be eternally grateful that nobody listened to the forever-clueless Slow Joe. The man is a fatuous, blithering gasbag of the very first order. He preens and struts for the cameras, flashes his teeth, and argues most forcefully for his many ideas, virtually all of which turn out to be bad. In his way, he's a fun, attractive, and entertaining figure. But Biden is also someone who should never, ever be allowed to be in control of anything important. In that respect, he and Obama make a nice pair.

Byron