Thursday night/Friday morning, on the eve of John McCain’s announcement of who his running mate would be, was an all-nighter for this scribe. I really was tired and sleepy, but I just couldn’t make myself go to bed. Instead I was following this thread of comments on the Draft Sarah Palin For Vice President website. Adam Brickley, who created the site in February of 2007, has faithfully and tirelessly promoted Gov. Palin for the vice presidency ever since. My own meager efforts in support of Palin consisted of a couple of journal entries (here and here), so they pale in comparison to those of Adam, Palin’s true web champion.

The thread was a fascinating thing to watch as it unfolded. The contributors tried to separate solid clues from rumor as each new comment was posted. Pawlenty was in Ohio. No he wasn’t; he was staying in Minnesota for the state fair. Palin was in Alaska. No, wait, she might be in Ohio. What really intrigued me were the reports taken from a site which tracks aircraft flights. There was a lot of activity with a couple of chartered bizjets, one which flew from Alaska to Arizona and back, and another which made its way from Alaska directly to Ohio. The dates and time were just too convenient to be coincidence, and it seemed like a troublesome and expensive way to misdirect attention away from any other potential nominee.

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Four years ago, Republicans made hay out of the fact that the Democrats had a very liberal presidential ticket:

Republicans on Capitol Hill jumped on Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s pick of a vice presidential candidate — John Edwards, the junior senator from North Carolina — and zeroed in on the candidates’ liberal ratings, among other things.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert said, this is “not a balanced ticket …Kerry is the No. 1 liberal in the Senate and Edwards is No. 4.”

Former Republican National Committee (search) Chairman Rich Bond said, “This is the most liberal ticket since George McGovern and Sargent Shriver.”

Bush-Cheney chief strategist Matthew Dowd said the Kerry-Edwards ticket “is the most out-of-the-mainstream, liberal ticket in the history of the Democratic Party.”

-snip-

The non-partisan magazine National Journal in February released its yearly congressional vote ratings and identified Kerry as the No. 1 most-liberal voter in the Senate and ranked Edwards as No. 4. The magazine noted, however, that Kerry and Edwards missed many votes in 2003. The scores were based on votes on economic policy, social policy and foreign policy.

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Presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama has chosen, and his selection of Sen. Joe Biden for the ticket’s second spot has not helped his faltering campaign:

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I’ve already shown how Sarah Palin would be a smart pick by John McCain to be his running mate. In light of recent events, she’s looking like a smarter selection .


The announcement made early this morning by the Obama camp that Delaware Senator Joe Biden is Obama’s choice to share the Democrat presidential ticket with him sets the stage for McCain to name his own vice presidential nominee. The conventional wisdom seems to be that it will be former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Although I think Romney would be a strong selection, the Biden pick would make Gov. Palin an even stronger one.

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I’m not talking about the mere physical attractiveness of Alaska’s governor, though she has been blessed with an abundance of that gift. Palin was a competitor in the 1984 Miss Alaska beauty pageant after being named Miss Wasilla earlier that year, where she also won Miss Congeniality honors.

No, what I’m dicussing here is beauty in the political sense - as in the beauty of what John McCain, if he’s smart and willing to make a really bold move, could accomplish by naming Governor Palin as his running mate for the presidential election.

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The opponents of increased domestic drilling complain that it will take too many years before the oil it produces will get to market, and that it will make very little difference in the price of gasoline at the pump. Both arguments are totally without merit, as I have shown here, here and here. But let’s forget all that for the moment.

Though high prices at the pump hurt us all, there’s a much more compelling reason to ramp up domestic exploration, production and refining. It’s the most important issue in the United States right now, and it has been since the birth of this nation. I’m talking about national security.

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Those who are fond of repeating the Democrats’ talking point that a McCain victory would be a “Bush third term” should consider this:

After meeting with Vladimir Putin in 2001, President Bush said:

I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue.

I was able to get a sense of his soul.

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From the diaries by Erick.

The Russian bear is awake from its hibernation. Russia’s response to the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia was typically Russian - “disproportionate” - in the words of the Bush administration.

The conflict, killing thousands and dsplacing tens of thousands in just a weekend’s short time, has serious implications for the United States, its newer friends among the former Soviet republics and older friends around the world:

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While channel surfing last night, I caught this moveon.org attack ad aimed at GOP nominee in waiting John McCain:

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The National Enquirer dropped the first bombshell in October, 2007, when Edwards was still a candidate for the Democrat Party’s presidential nomination:

PRESIDENTIAL CHEATING SCANDAL! ALLEGED AFFAIR COULD WRECK JOHN EDWARDS’ CAMPAIGN BID

The article described the “other woman” as someone who had previously worked on Edwards’ campaign and withheld the woman’s name. But if the story was to be believed, word of the affair got out because she frequently talked about it with her friends.

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Dick Morris was once a hotshot consultant who was eagerly sought out by politicians from Bill Clinton to Vincente Fox. Now he’s been reduced to writing columns for the lightly-regarded NewsMax.com. How the mighty have fallen! The major reason for Morris’ downfall is that he’s just been wrong too many times.

Morris is the guy who missed the boat in 2003, saying that he “didn’t give much” for John Kerry’s chances of beating Howard Dean in the Democrat Party’s presidential primaries and predicted that Dean would roll over the opposition to face President Bush in the general election.

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