And so as we ponder Sen. Obama’s choice of Senator Joseph Biden, and Sen. McCain’s choice of Governor Sarah Palin as their party’s prospective Vice-President, consider, from our friend Stephen Truitt, what you hear in this NPR audio segment on the first man known as “The Veep,” a term coined by then-eleven-year-old Steve in honor of his grandfather, Alben Barkley, thirty-fifth Vice President of the United States. Listen through without crying: I dare you.

Yes, that too is an S & G title; those guys were good. And the occasion fits perfectly for the utterly brilliant (I can’t exaggerate on its brilliance) choice of 44-year old Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate. With this one move, McCain has solved his problems with the Limbaugh contingent, the religious right, and the corporate contingents of the Republican base, quite possibly made a huge inroad in independent voters, and quite possibly, if there is any lingering resentment re: Obama’s edging out Hillary for the number one chair, for those who want a woman in...

How good is it that Simon & Garfunkel named a song with that title, just as I pondered what to call a post about Hillary’s too-long-awaited speech designed [to tepidly be] praising of Obama, rather than [to culpably be caught] burying him? Too good. But I’ll take it. It sounds from her speech, that did contain the compulsory elements of Obama-Biden-praise, like, well, that… she’s still running… the one thing she kind of needed not to do. Oh well. There’s no “I” in team, Hillary Clinton (though there are, of course, at least two i’s in…. Hillary Clinton… and I...

Well, it’s been four years already, so it’s time for a page one story in the Grey Lady that features good old political blogs and their presence at national conventions, particularly the Democratic Convention, as blogs are no longer just “hip” and “cutting edge” but are now arguably legitimate power players. Insofar as the most-read blogs now have daily readerships larger than all but a few newspapers, this presence of political blogs on the big stage is inevitable: not to do so would be to exclude key demographics from access to information and perspective, and of course, to a key...

One must hand it to the Obama campaign, which is evidently printing several versions of bumper stickers with different veep candidate names, just to keep things stirred up, and the feckless press interested in something besides celebrity obsession. We may know… tomorrow? Notwithstanding my own extensive experience in both the private and public sectors (including experience in the executive, legislative and judicial branches), and for federal, state and local governments, and being in Barack’s college class (and IIRC getting a better grade than he did in political theory)… and most importantly, demonstrating my ubiquitous knowledge of everything with this blog…...

The “rock-solid” go-to guy in the Bush Administration’s grandest of grand strategies… our-man-in-Islamabad… Generalissimo Presidentissimo Pervez Musharaf of Pakistan… has just tendered his resignation in the face of an almost certainly-successful impeachment initiative in Pakistan’s newly resurgent democratically elected parliament. While the machinations in Georgia are of concern to Americans, events in Pakistan, for those who haven’t been paying attention, are the freaking ballgame. Pakistan is the tip of the hub of the axis of the axis of evil: it is Pakistan that has been at the center of nuclear proliferation to North Korea, Iran, Libya, and God knows where...

I’ve kind of held back in discussing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan Russian incursion into the Georgian separatist territory of South Ossetia (and now, evidently, the other Georgian separatist territory of Abkhazia), which has been met with “condemnation” from the United States. One wonders what might have happened if we had a less solipsistic President who didn’t “look into the soul” of former KGB agent and Russian strongman (now from the position of prime minister) Vladimir Putin and see “someone I could do business with” and instead saw simply… a former KGB agent, who at a minimum would be duplicitous,...

What can one say about the amazing outcome of “The War Crimes Trial of the Century” (seriously, the only American “war crimes trial” since right after World War II, and the only one so called in this 21st century), that of Hitler’s OBL’s personal chauffeur motor pool driver and mechanic, Salim Hamdan. Yesterday, Hamdan was convicted of the made-up charge of “material support of terrorism” and acquitted of the made up charge of conspiracy to commit a war crime. Today, the same herd of kangaroos magically sentenced Mr. Hamdan to a term of 5 1/2 years, which, since it amazingly...

And so it’s time to bask in reflected glory of some of our friends… Ron Suskind’s new book (which I just bought) “The Way of the World” has just comes out, and though Candace mentions it prominently, she is too modest to mention that she is featured prominently in dozens of pages of Suskind’s latest work for her tireless dedication and service on behalf of her GTMO-detained clients. And kudos to our friend Mad Kane who was just awarded the 2008 Robert Benchley Society Prize for Humor (the grand prize, none of this first runner-up stuff for our Mad)… the...

Literary giant, Soviet dissident and Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn passed away at 89, in Moscow. His ground-breaking works including A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch and The Gulag Archipelago duly pissed off the powers that be in the former Soviet Union, who responded with various forms of ostracism, including attempts to ban his work and eventual exile. Solzhenitsyn outlived the U.S.S.R. by around 17 years; in later life, he was a fan of national greatness Republicans Vladimir Putin and the resurgent Russia. His death now reminds us that he was actually still around… when our own government, albeit...