WTF?!

Joe Biden, you are an odd, odd man.

BOSTON -- Joe Biden said Wednesday that Hillary Clinton might have been a
better choice for the Democratic ticket.
Biden was defending Clinton after a
questioner at a fund-raiser said he was glad she wasn't selected as Barack
Obama's running mate.
''Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified
than I am to be vice president of the United States,'' Biden said. ''She is
qualified to be president of the United States of America. She is easily
qualified to be vice president of the United States of America, and quite
frankly, might've been a better pick than me.''
Clinton lost to Obama in the
party primary and some of her backers have resisted embracing Obama. AP

Of course, Obama knew that when he picked you, so what does that make him?

Issues I'm to the left of Barack Obama on

I'll be the first to admit that the anti-gay statements are a big motivator, but I definitely think that the trend (can you call avoiding a topic a trend?) of liberatarianism on the gay issues is a good one.

This is just sad

Slate asks for dreams about Sarah Palin.

Would anyone in the world dare to admit to dreams about Barack Obama having a friendly beer with Osama, or shining your shoes and eating watermelon? Then why is it OK to discuss (and solicit) dreams about Mrs. Palin "as a scolding, ominous figure," urging one's "young son to kill Palin with a string bean," or about "a fashion show [where] Palin served her creme fraiche on little scooped corn chips?"

Peaceful protests for better schools: "Very selfish" says Chicago mayor

Paul Tough of Slate Magazine writes: (you might have to scroll down)

An unusual act of civil disobedience last week in Chicago: To protest inequities
in Illinois' system of school financing, James Meeks, a Baptist minister and
state senator, organized a boycott of the first day of school by 1,400 Chicago
public-school students, almost all of whom were black. The twist: That morning,
he bused them all to Northfield, a wealthy, mostly white Chicago suburb,
to the lavish campus of New Trier
Township High School, a public school with four orchestras, a rowing club, a
course in "kinetic wellness," and AP classes in French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Latin, and Chinese. You know, your basic American public school. The Chicago kids lined up and tried to enroll for classes—symbolically, at least.
To their credit, the administrators at New Trier, as well as a few parents and students, welcomed the visitors with signs, snacks, and cool drinks. Every Chicago student who took part in the protest was invited to register at the school, but none of them will in fact be able to enroll because of New Trier's residency requirements. No
house in the suburbs, no spot in the school.Mayor Daley fulminated,
calling Meeks's protest "very selfish." But it was a peaceful demonstration and
by all accounts a successful one ("This is civil disobedience at its finest,"
one New Trier parent said).
As the Chicago Tribune reported:
"At issue is how much money schools spend per student. In a funding system
fueled largely by local property taxes, New Trier Township spent nearly $17,000
per student in 2005-06 ... while Chicago Public Schools spent an estimated
$10,400 per pupil."It's one of those basic facts of American educational life
that seem inevitable and yet impossible at the same time. On the one hand, of
course the wealthy burghers of Northfield are going to spend more on their
public schools than the poor residents of inner-city Chicago. On the other hand:
We're really going to send rich white kids to excellent, well-funded public
schools and send poor black kids to substandard, poorly funded public schools?
That's our plan for fixing public education in America?

Unfortunately, Mr. Tough focuses more on the money spent than on the actual way to fix it, the big V word (vouchers), but the point is clear. And Mayor Daley is threatened.

Kudos, by the way, to the New Tryer folks who offered their support.

"She has basically ignored social issues, period," said Gregg Erickson, an economist and columnist for the Alaska Budget Report

Yet another reason why I love Sarah Palin.

It's a bad time to be Barack Obama

From Hot Air:

With both Rasmussen and Gallup showing Barack Obama moving backwards even before the Republican Convention dropped its balloons on Andrea Mitchell, one can excuse the Democratic nominee for hearing footsteps. How desperate has he gotten? Looks like he’s playing the race card once again:

“I know that I’m not your typical presidential candidate,” Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told executives and employees of the Schott glass company Friday afternoon, “and I just want to be honest with you. I know that.”
“And I know that the temptation is to say, ‘You know what? …The guy hasn’t been there that long in Washington.,’ You know, ‘he’s got funny name,’ You know, ‘we’re not sure about him,’” Obama continued. “And that’s what the Republicans, when they say, ‘This isn’t about issues, it’s about personalities,’ what they’re really saying is, ‘We’re going to try to scare people about Barack. So we’re going to say that you know, maybe he’s got Muslim connections or we’re going to say that, you know, he hangs out with radicals or he’s not patriotic.’

Once again, Obama has resorted to a smear campaign against the McCain campaign. They have never –never — even hinted that Obama has “Muslim connections”. They have never made even a slight attempt to make his race an issue, despite this fourth repeat of this particular smear. Neither has the RNC nor any mainstream Republicans. In fact, the McCain campaign let go one staffer who only Twittered a link to a Jeremiah Wright video earlier this year.

If Obama wants to argue that some misdirected bloggers have made these kind of
attacks, he might have a point. But by that standard, the Democrats have
attacked Bristol Palin, smeared Sarah Palin about the maternity of her youngest
child, and questioned the mental capacity of John McCain. If Obama wants
to start making these kinds of accusations, then maybe he ought to get his own
house in order first.

More on Palin and Sexism

From The Volokh Conspiracy:

Daddies, Mommies, Politicians and Double Standards:

I was driving my baby daughter Eden to her four-month doctor
appointment this morning, when I heard reporter Anne Korblut of the Washington
Post on The Diane Rehm show defending the media's coverage of Sarah Palin and
her family. She said something along the lines of, "If Barack Obama had a
four-month-old special needs baby, and a seventeen year-old pregnant daughter,
I'd be the first to ask whether this is the right time for him to be running for
president."
Balderdash! Obama has two daughters, one born in 1998, the other
in 2001. Even if we acknowledge that mommies tend to do more of the parenting
than daddies, can we all agree that little girls need their daddies, and that
fathering little girls creates some moral obligation to spend time with them?
Good.
Since January 2005, Obama's family has lived in Chicago, while he
initially spent much of his time in D.C. working as a Senator, and then, since
last Spring, he has spent almost all of his time on the road campaigning. I'd be
surprised if he's seen his kids more than once a month during campaign
season.
Does this make Obama a less-than-ideal father? You bet it does. But
he's not running for Father of the Year, he's running for president. So it's
entirely proper that this has NOT been a political issue.
Enter Sarah Palin.
If any reporter, Anne Kornblut or otherwise, has asked Obama how he feels about
not participating in the raising of his children on a day-to-day basis, or what
will happen when he's president if one his girls is sick in the middle of the
night and is calling for daddy (as people have asked about Palin), I've missed
it.
I agree that it's hypocritical of the "traditional values" crowd to
suddenly lionize Palin, when they've been arguing for years that a mother's
place is with her small children. (Dr. Laura, to her credit, has been consistent
on this, and is duly critical of the Palin pick.)
But for the media to claim
that there's no double-standard in how they treat Palin's family obligations and
how they treat Obama's (or other male politicians, for that matter) just can't
withstand scrutiny. Either it's okay to delegate one's parenting
responsibilities to pursue political ambitions, or it's not.

I do disagree on one point: maybe some traditionalists think that it should be the woman that stays home, but I'll bet that most just want someone to stay home. Surely in the White House, Todd would stay home with the kids at least most of the time, so I don't see a problem there.

And moreover, John Edwards' wife is dying. If he had become president (and we're putting aside the issue of the affair, since we didn't know anything about it at the time), there is a good chance that she would have died while he was in office. They have two small children, who would have no mother at all in this case (and would surely be pretty distraught to boot). But I never heard anyone, anyone discuss or dare to ask what would happen in that case- whether Edwards would be too distracted to pursue his duties. Why? Because Edwards has a penis.